long - term stage. in short, through the interaction of these three pillars, the central bank of argentina boasts the adequate tools to provide two essential public goods that have been lacking in stress situations during the past 30 years. through a set of robust policies to face various kinds of shocks, we are, for the first time in decades, in a position to provide monetary and financial stability to the argentine people. 4. the international scenario a year ago, when i presented the 2008 monetary program asserting that we would be facing the worst crisis since the great depression, many thought i was exaggerating. at that time, the economies were still growing at a historically high pace and commodity prices were showing an upward trend. even though many expected a deterioration of the international scenario, few of us foresaw that the consequences would be as harsh as they have proven to be in the past few months. the outlook nowadays is quite ominous. every economy in the world is growing at a lower pace, and the main developed countries have fallen into a recession. commodities reached their ceiling by mid - 2008 and then started to plunge. even today, they are lower that they were a year ago. the crisis affects both advanced and emerging countries, and is not showing any signs of finding a floor in the short term. throughout this year, financial trouble persisted, with a marked deterioration as from september. the international turmoil that was apparent since mid - 2007 had initially been diagnosed as a liquidity shortage. therefore, the main authorities in the world addressed it by essentially providing liquidity to the market. the threats to systemic stability, however, were evidenced by key institutions going bankrupt, which led to significant drops in asset prices. growing concern over insolvency in various economic sectors has prompted action to rebuild confidence in the global financial system and to curb the damage to the real economy. the current situation in the united states, for instance, shows some features that are characteristic of a scenario known in the economic literature as “ liquidity trap, ” such as that of the japanese recession in the 1990s or the great depression. recession and financial stability are coupled with a new challenge : flow deflation, where decreasing prices cause financial losses to enterprises and households by posing a relative increase in their liabilities. such a scenario – characterized by short - term interest rates close to 0 percent ( bonds and money being virtually perfect substitutes ) and a low expansionary transmission of movements from the money supply to the other monetary aggregates, with banks reluctant to

in a framework of a relatively unchanging demand. despite the sudden drop, however, commodity prices are still at high historical levels. due to dwindling international prices, combined with reduced harvest and other factors, exports are projected to amount to usd 69 billion – a somewhat lower figure than that for 2008. nevertheless, the trade surplus is expected to enable the current account balance to remain positive for the seventh year running, an unprecedented event in recent argentine economic history. in line with this macroeconomic scenario, prices are expected to grow at a lower pace. as we have already discussed, inflation in argentina can be attributed to several factors and, thus, should be tackled from various fronts at once. in this sense, in the second half of 2008, inflation was kept in check through the joint efforts by the fiscal, wage, income and monetary policies, as well as the effect of lower international foodstuff and energy prices. for the coming year, we expect inflationary pressures to loosen up by the combined effect of policy actions and the international and domestic scenarios, which will be reflected on both wholesale and retail prices and on broader based indicator such as the gdp implicit price index. as to the consumer price index for the greater buenos aires area ( cpi - gba ) in 2009, the projection is 7 percent for the base case scenario. 5. 2. the 2009 monetary program the design of the 2009 monetary program requires us to think of different scenarios for next year ’ s economic trend. to this end, and in line with best international practices, the central bank combines the projections yielded by several models with the economic policymakers ’ judgment. on that basis, the monetary program envisages the interaction of all the relevant variables, allowing forecasts to be consistent with each other. there would be no point in setting a target exclusively based on the behavior of a single variable, without considering how it impacts on and is impacted on by others. in other words, “ experiments ” which concentrate on a single aspect of the economy without taking into account the consequences on the different actors and sectors should be avoided. but we cannot trust models alone. this brings the “ expert ’ s judgment ” into the picture, to fine - tune projections in the light of their expertise in economic policy management beyond what theoretical schemes can capture. it is on the basis of this approach that macroeconomic and money demand forecasts are made to support the monetary program. this policy framework is reflected in monetary aggregates trend for the last four years