Sergio Massa is the only thing standing between Argentina and chaos

Walk down Calle Lavalle or Calle Florida in the centre of Buenos Aires and every 20 metres someone will call out “cambio” (exchange), offering to buy dollars at a rate that is roughly double the official one. In supermarkets prices rise every month. Inflation this year is heading for 100%. As it has been several times in the past 50 years Argentina is once again lost in an economic labyrinth mainly of its own making. The distortions have reached danger point. “If this carries on, we’ll see looting of supermarkets again,” says a taxi driver.

At the root of the current instability is a weak and divided Peronist government. Alberto Fernández, the president, owes his job to the decision by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation), Peronism’s most powerful figure, to pick him as the Peronist candidate and to run herself to be his vice-president. They inherited an economy that their conservative predecessor, Mauricio Macri, had tried, but failed, to fix. He reached a $57bn agreement with the IMF to avert disaster. Mr Fernández’s first finance minister, Martín Guzmán, an academic, expanded price and exchange controls, restructured foreign bonds and negotiated a new accord with the IMF.