A good idea may have come from Cristina Kirchner
If taking government debt is as bad as fraud, let's make it also illegal
Yesterday, Cristina Kirchner was convicted on corruption charges, sentenced to six years of prison and a lifetime ban on political positions that may extend to her privileged pensions and including an embargo over an amount close to 200 million dollars.
She reacted as usual, and as many politicians have done in the past, giving a political interpretation and dismissing the clear evidence of corruption. In her hysterical and narcissistic reaction, though, she raised a subject that we may very well take as a good idea for a future institutional reform. While she was complaining about being charged with fraud against the state finances she not only denied it but she claimed the real fraud had been Macri’s loan with the IMF.
Certainly, the loan went to cancel other debts, which in time were taken to cover all sorts of useless government expenditures, bloated bureaucracies and political privileges, as all previous loans, including those taken under Cristina’s administration.
But the idea that increasing government’s debt may be considered a fraud is something worth considering. Many times it has been stressed that such a debt has an immoral component: it imposes a burden to those who are young or have not even been born, and do not have a voice to be heard. It is taking a loan that someone else will pay, someone who does not know it, or is not here to now it, yet.
Therefore, how about if we take Cristina’s words seriously and turn government debt into fraud and a crime. Cristina’s fraud against the state already is, that is why she is sentenced to several years of jail. If we extend the concept to debt management, well, Cristina would get additional years of conviction, together with the likes of Amado Boudou, Axel Kicillof, Alberto Fernández, Martín Guzmán. And her hated Mauricio Macri and his ministers.
Fraud against the state was already a crime when she and her husband organized it. Debt taking still it is not, but if we follow Cristina’s ideas, why do not have them both as frauds?