Argentina: Greek financial rescue doomed to fail

Source Associated Press

Gregorio Lopez has a message for the Greek workers who are protesting deep cuts in salaries and pensions that come with an international, trillion-dollar rescue package: You're on your own. Lopez and his fellow employees at the Lavalan wool-processing factory worked for a year without pay after Argentina's economy imploded in 2001 and the country defaulted on a record $95 billion debt. They endured blows from riot police to keep creditors from carting off the equipment. In the end, they had to take over the factory and form a worker-run cooperative to save their jobs. "It was really ugly," Lopez said. "We didn't have support from anybody–not the government, not even the union.... Our only way out was to do it ourselves." Argentina also had to go it alone after failing to make the deep cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund to secure more loans. The country in 2001 was in many ways where Greece and other southern European nations are today, with its economy sputtering, companies failing and huge debts coming due. But instead of a trillion-dollar rescue to keep Greece from defaulting, Argentina got a cold shoulder from lenders.