Purely subjective Argentina impressions

I was last here nine years ago...

1. It now feels much less safe, and the rate of apparent "derelictism" is much higher.  The streets are noticeably dirtier.

2. Big shopping centers are more prominent.

3. It feels less like people are pretending to be Europeans, and more like a part of Mercosur.

4. The country has average nine percent growth over the last three years.  Some of this is the soya boom, but much of it is making up for financial collapse.  Destruction of a country´s banking system will lead to poverty, coordination failures, and an inability to evaluate and implement new projects.  Old projects will lose their access to liquidity and unemployment will rise steeply.  But few real resources are destroyed.  Once you get over the coordination problems, the factories and pampas are still there and rates of growth will be high.  But don´t be fooled, Argentina has not yet found a recipe for economic stability.  Furthermore the distributional consequences of this "experiment" have destroyed a significant part of the already-tattered social fabric.  Right now they are riding the crest of the psychology of an increasing first derivative.  But beware...

5. I have a new theory about the Argentina economic boom of (roughly) 1890 to 1920.  The country put a large amount of resources into cattle right before refrigerated transport revolutionized the global demand for beef.

6. There is much ruin in a nation.