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The next big date on Argentina’s financial trauma calendar is Sept. 15. That’s when the International Monetary Fund decides whether to lend the beleaguered nation another $5.4 billion. An ordinary lender might close its wallet just after the $44 billion it has already poured into Argentina was “reprofiled”—that is, Buenos Aires unilaterally stretched out the payment schedule.

But an IMF freezeout could turn an emergency into a catastrophe on the ground, and signal failure for the biggest bailout in the fund’s history. “There could be a run on the banks as people withdraw dollars from their accounts for fear of having them frozen,” says Hector Torres, an Argentine former executive director at the IMF now at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Tough choice.

In your typical emerging market debt crisis, a government struggles to meet private-sector loans, then the IMF steps in as honest broker and last-resort lender. This time is different. IMF boss Christine Lagarde, who steps down on Sept. 12 to head the European Central Bank, led a gargantuan rescue effort in early 2018 aimed at bankrolling the reforms of President Mauricio Macri.

That came unglued when Macri was crushed in a primary election this past Aug. 11 by Peronist opponent Alberto Fernández. The Argentine peso has dropped 20% since then, the country’s $100 billion-plus in dollar bonds are trading around 40% of par, and Macri had to reinstate capital controls, negating his key policy achievement.

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A few accommodating noises from Fernández, who looks all but certain to succeed Macri after general elections on Oct. 27, would help the IMF stay engaged. The 60-year-old technocrat is seen as pragmatic by nature, and respected economist Guillermo Nielsen is emerging as his key advisor. “Nielsen is a reasonably well-prepared economist who will not want to do crazy things,” says Claudio Loser, a former director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere department who now heads the Centennial Group consultancy.

But Fernández’s public statements remain uncompromising. “What I want the IMF to understand is that they are guilty of this situation,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It was an act of complicity with the Macri administration.” He promised a “plan to boost consumption” by raising wages and pensions, despite inflation that was in the 50% range before devaluation.

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Investors see Argentina and the fund as locked in a marriage, even if it’s headed for a rocky patch. The country tried divorce once, defaulting without IMF participation in 2001 and forcing creditors to accept 25 cents on the dollar. That worked reasonably well until 2008 as grain exports rode the commodities supercycle. But the postcrisis years brought stagflation and, in 2015, the election of Macri, Argentina’s first pro-business leader in decades.

Complicit or not, markets will keep looking to the fund as a barometer of confidence in Argentina, and anti-IMF posturing is costing Fernández precious time, says Siobhan Morden, an analyst who specializes in sovereign crises at Amherst Pierpont Securities. “Fernández doesn’t look like he has a team or a plan,” she says. “Ten people can argue 10 different scenarios, but the range of recovery value is probably declining.”

If the debt math dictates peace with the fund, political arithmetic demands more warlike rhetoric. Fernández’s vice-presidential running mate is Cristina Kirchner, the creditor-hostile president who preceded Macri, and he doesn’t want to kick off his presidency by betraying her voters. “The best scenario is he goes to the fund after some fireworks,” Loser says. “I give it a 50% chance.”

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