Kirchner Foams Over Pension Fund Investment

“They really looted and used the savings of retirees to invest it abroad…. I ask myself, ‘How can that kind of money management be defended?’ … But today, in an act of dignity and responsibility, thank God, we’re returning to a state-run social security system of solidarity. We’re returning to the state-administration of retirement funds. No longer will those funds be invested abroad.” — former President Nestor Kirchner, November 17, 2008

On the same day that Argentine newspapers confirmed the first case of rabies in Buenos Aires since 1981, Nestor Kirchner said – in a speech in which he was literally foaming at the mouth – that private pension funds will no longer be invested overseas.

Kirchner, who as governor of Santa Cruz Province famously took around $500 million in taxpayer money and invested it overseas, indicated that investing peoples’ retirement funds abroad is a bad thing, a practice that must end. Since he took power in 2003, Kirchner, as well as his wife and successor, Cristina Fernández, have repeatedly told Argentines “to have a memory” and to remember what politicians have done in the past. The former president, evidently, failed to appreciate the irony of his own comments Monday.

Fernández announced last month that her government would nationalize Argentina’s 14-year-old private pension fund system. The Lower House of Congress recently approved the plan and the Senate is expected to pass it this Thursday or Friday.

Kirchner Audio:

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