Christine Lagarde

09/12 - 15:10 - There is an old Argentine wisecrack that says: a person who leaves Argentina for six months, and then returns, finds the country completely transformed, but someone who returns after an absence of ten years finds that things are more or less as he or she left them. It is a joke but one whose accuracy would seem to be borne out by the results of the October 27 general election that repudiated the neoliberal government of Mauricio Macri and his Cambiemos (“Let’s Change”) party that had been in power since 2015, and instead made Alberto Fernández president and former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the new vice-president. Thus restored to power were the Peronists who have ruled Argentina for nearly twenty-three out of the thirty-six years since the restoration of democracy in 1983.

Process will put her stamp on the central bank and seek to resolve recent divisions

Central bank president seeks to rebalance eurozone economy away from exports

The European Central Bank's first female president inherits an almost empty toolbox from her predecessor — at a time when persistently low inflation and weak growth are showing the limits of monetary policy.

Mario Draghi marks last policy meeting by saying ‘never give up’

The new ECB president must encourage governments to take more pro-growth policies

The nod from EU lawmakers paves the way for Lagarde to take up the post with the European Central Bank in November. Once formally confirmed, she will be the ECB's first female president.

With the Peronists waiting in the wings, the country is struggling to avoid a ninth sovereign default

Argentina’s record $56 billion IMF bailout remains intact and the institution is still fully behind Macri. But it remains to be seen if the next managing director will give his government the sympathetic treatment that the former French finance minister usually offered.