IT WAS an announcement Mauricio Macri hoped never to have to make. On May 8th Argentina’s exhausted-looking president declared that Argentina was seeking a credit line from the IMF. He had little alternative. Efforts to prop up the peso, which has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar since the start of the year, had failed.

IT WAS an announcement Mauricio Macri hoped never to have to make. On May 8th Argentina’s exhausted-looking president declared that Argentina was seeking a credit line from the IMF. He had little alternative. Efforts to prop up the peso, which has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar since the start of the year, had failed.