An Augean stable

GOVERNMENT bean-counters do not, in most countries, have a reputation for derring-do. But in Argentina some have proved to be martyrs and heroes. Statisticians whose findings displeased Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the country’s president from 2007 to 2015, were sacked and then prosecuted for their effrontery. “Teams were decimated,” says Jorge Todesca, who has been appointed by the new president, Mauricio Macri, to clean up and repair the government’s statistics institute (INDEC). If they were not fired, independent-minded statisticians “just resigned and left”, or were banished to back rooms without equipment. In 2011 Mr Todesca’s economic-consulting firm was fined 500,000 pesos ($123,000) for publishing an inflation index that contradicted the one put out by INDEC.

It is not the only Augean stable Mr Macri discovered when he succeeded Ms Fernández in December. In addition to an economy in disarray, she and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, who governed before her, left a state apparatus bloated by patronage and weakened by fiscal incontinence. Some 5-7% of public-sector employees do not bother to show up to work but collect roughly 20 billion pesos ($1.4 billion) in wages, estimates KPMG, an auditing firm. Even Tango 01, a 23-year-old Boeing 757 that serves as the presidential jet, is in disrepair. To get to Davos for the World Economic Forum last month, Mr Macri flew Air France.