THE first YouTube video, posted in 2005, showed the site’s 25-year-old co-founder standing in front of elephants at the San Diego zoo. One of its most recent videos is a little different: it shows Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, explaining why he needs the IMF to stand in front of the bears destroying his country’s currency.

The peso fell by more than 7% on August 29th, capping another difficult month. Its fall will make it harder for the central bank to meet next year’s inflation target, further undermining the institution’s credibility and the currency’s appeal. Argentina must also roll over or replace about $50bn of debt falling due over the remainder of 2018 and 2019. The financial markets worry that the government will struggle to secure both refinancing and re-election, since the sky-high interest rates required to attract creditors may further repel voters in the October 2019 elections.

On YouTube, Mr Macri asked the IMF to speed up disbursement of the $50bn loan it had agreed to in June. Argentina received $15bn upfront. The remainder, which it had hoped not to need, is scheduled to arrive in 12 equal quarterly instalments, provided Argentina meets the fund’s conditions. In a statement, Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said the fund would “re-examine the phasing” of the loan.

Mr Macri admitted that the market had expressed a lack of confidence in his government’s finances. In Turkey, by contrast, the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has often expressed a lack of confidence in markets. He sees the sell-off in the Turkish lira as a weapon in an economic war waged by America, which has imposed sanctions on two Turkish ministers and two of its exports (steel and aluminium) because of the detention of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson.