Who’s Crying for Argentina?

In his Tuesday, November 26 Op-Ed, Tom Hale expresses outrage at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies decision to invite Domingo Cavallo, Argentina’s former economy minister, to discuss “Argentina and the IMF During the Two Bush Administrations.” To equate Dr. Cavallo’s tenure as economy minister of Argentine to Enron’s Kenneth Lay or Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic is to wholly misunderstand the nature of Argentine politics and Domingo Cavallo himself. In fact, it is just as inappropriate as equating Argentina’s economic difficulties with a single cause.

Dr. Cavallo has held a number of public offices in Argentina in the last twenty years and not all of his policies have been flawless, and it is not the intent of this column to defend all his actions. Dr. Cavallo was never the president of Argentina, and his ability to implement policies was severely limited, particularly as an economy minister to the permissive and almost unchecked power ...