UN General Assembly
2012

the same austerity programme that has been applied for decades now and that has not borne any fruit. When we in Argentina discuss the problem we talk about it with deep-seated knowledge of the type of neoliberal policies that were the result of the Washington consensus, which was launched following the problems in the 1990s and ended up exploding as a default on the most significant sovereign debt known in history. Argentina owed 160 per cent of its GDP, the result of debt policies that in turn had resulted from the industrialization and ongoing imposed adjustment and consumption policies. Those policies were ferociously and methodically imposed on countries, just as we are seeing now with Spain, Greece and Portugal, with the resulting danger to the eurozone. Endangering the eurozone involves more than just the undermining of an economic region. It is actually endangering the very stability of the world financial system. We should recall that some 65 per cent of international reserves deposited in central banks around the world are in United States dollars, and some