Buenos Aires Herald 
The General Confederation of Labor’s (CGT) joint secretary general, Héctor Daer, came out backing the government yesterday and accused speculators and TV pundits of “destabilizing household economies”.
His statements, published on a Twitter thread on Tuesday evening, come at a time of maximum uncertainty in the Argentine economy: yesterday, the informal dollar price reached almost AR$500 and sources in the Economy Ministry said that it will renegotiate Argentina’s critical deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from the ground up, including disbursements and all targets.
The Central Bank traded bonds to intervene in the value of financial dollars yesterday. The Fund recommended strict limits on this activity in its last review of the country’s deal.
“The CGT is a part of this national and popular government, and responsible for conducting the worker’s movement: we won’t let speculators bomb with speeches that harm the working class,”
he said on Twitter following an event in the CGT headquarters with Labor Minister Kelly Olmos and Culture Minister Tristan Bauer.
“TV channels show numbers and values for a market that doesn’t exist but affects household economies,” he added, referring to the informal (blue) dollar exchange rate, which has spiked over the past few days. The government has no tools to control the price of the informal dollar because it is illegal, which is why it tends to be the most volatile rate.
The run on the parallel exchange rates followed a week of turbulence: agricultural exporters have significantly slowed their exports and did not sell any product at all last Wednesday. This was despite the introduction earlier this month of a special exchange rate for the sector, which will give them more pesos per dollar sold than they would get at the official rate. Known as the “agro dollar III” because it is the third time Massa has implemented a special rate, it is designed to entice them to export rather than holding stock.
On Friday, the broker Max Capital circulated rumors in financial markets that the government would devalue the peso when trading started on Monday morning. The company published an apology on Saturday and will be subjected to an administrative inquiry.
The CGT, founded in 1930, is the largest labor confederation in Argentina. Daer, a long-time peronist unionist, is close to President Alberto Fernández. Since the return of democracy, only the current president has never experienced a CGT general strike – Cristina Kirchner did not face any during her first mandate, but workers striked across the country five times during her second.
