Sergio Massa has finally announced Gabriel Rubinstein, a harsh critic of Cristina Kirchner, as deputy minister

Eighteen days after taking office as the Nation’s Minister of Economy, Sergio Tomás Massa has announced who will assign him: the office of Secretary of Economic Planning will be held by Gabriel Rubinstein.

The first name that circulated in support of Massa was that of Rubinstein, head of the consulting firm Gabriel Rubinstein y Asociados (GRA) and who was the representative of the Central Bank during Roberto Lavagna’s administration, from 2002 to 2005.

Rubinstein was then the negotiator with the International Monetary Fund and the representative in the Central Bank of Roberto Lavagna, during the years in which he held the Ministry of Economy with Néstor Kirchner. When Lavagna left in 2005, Rubinstein dated his political boss.

But that name appeared vetoed after it became known that the economist would accompany Massa: from Kirchnerist factories there emerged highly critical tweets and comments by Rubinstein against Cristina Kirchner and against presidential efforts K.

The most difficult, dated June 15, 2016, showed CFK digging with a shovel during an official act. In that meme, Cristina was asked if she was gardening and the then president replied “Only by checking the balance”, in relation to the excavations in Santa Cruz that the Justice had ordered, looking for buried money, presumably, for corruption.

The head of the GRA Consultora had also retweeted posts from opponents of the ruling party such as Patricia Bullrich and the liberal economist Diana Mondino, with harsh criticism of Alberto Fernández’s presidential administration.

The discussion on the incorporation managed to subside on Monday 15 August: this party was, finally, the day in which Massa was able to impose someone of his own and that had been suggested to him by Roberto Lavagna himself, who the current Minister of Economy feel like your guru in the field. However, the announcement was postponed to this Sunday.

Massa thus manages to install Rubinstein, who can capitalize on him together with the consecration of Flavia Royón di Salta as head of the Secretariat for Energy, where Darío Martínez and the powerful Federico Basualdo, area undersecretary who reports to Cristina and Máximo Kirchner, were displaced. Thus Massa imposed his criteria and their names in fundamental boxes for economic management.

The Minister of Economy finished closing the arrival of Rubisntein, after conversations which he kept with the president Alberto Fernández and the vice president Cristina Kirchnerwho has finished enabling the appointment.

The explanation must now be given by Rubinstein, who in September 2014 had posted that “for me to enter Kirchnerism would be like saying: ‘I am an idiot, but long live Nestor and Cristina, damn it‘”.

But after Cristina Kirchner has cleared other of his harsh critics such as Alberto Fernández or Sergio Massa, the Rubinstein affair seems light.

as already mentioned Clarione, in March of this year, when the possibility of a dollarization of the Argentine economy was ringing strong. Clarin contacted the economist to find out his idea on the subject.

In this regard, the author of the book “Dollarization, Argentina in the global village” stated that in 1999 when he wrote it “there was an underlying idea that dollarization could do a lot to avoid default, and avoid a collapse of the country. economy. “That process finally took place two years later, which was the collapse of convertibility, pesification and corralito.

Put into context, the economist made it clear that “this made sense at the time and in that way”. “Now to dollarize you have to have reserves, something that is not there today,” he warned. And he added: “Before embarking on a process of these characteristics, it is necessary to see what goal you are pursuing. If what you want is to lower inflation to 5% per annum, it is not necessary to dollarize”.

“Basically, even if it is a guiding rule that can be useful, I do not see that it is the right time to think about it. All energy must be used to eliminate the fiscal deficit to eliminate inflation,” he concluded.

In his opinion, this is the essential objective at the moment because “by eliminating the fiscal deficit, in a short time we have the possibility of having inflation like any other country”.

As Massa announced on Twitter

Through his Twitter account, the new economy minister announced the appointment of Gabriel Rubinstein as deputy minister in a series of posts.

“A few days ago we started working in the Ministry of Economy_Ar. To confirm the Secretary for Economic Planning, we had to wait for the person we have chosen to resolve a family issue and dissolve his contractual responsibilities incompatible with the public function”, he said. written in a first publication.

In it, anticipating who he finally named in a second post, Sergio Massa has attached an image of himself during a meeting with Rubinstein.

Then, he continued: “After these procedures and procedures are completed, Gabriel Rubinstein will formally join the @Economia_Ar ministry team as the new Secretary of Economic Planning from tomorrow,” he concluded in his formal announcement.