Working in a bank used to be the archetypal safe job in Argentina, where a son would follow in his father's footsteps. But with the country in political and economic turmoil, banking has become a risky business.
"It's like living in a war zone," complains a local banker. "We need helmets to protect us from the stuff they throw at us in the streets."
PHOTO: AFP
Like Argentina's maligned politicians, who have taken to wearing disguises to avoid detection in public, its bankers are leaving their business suits hanging in the closet, and going to work in casual clothes to avoid recognition.
The Buenos Aires financial district, known as "La City" with its narrow streets, cafes, bars and cigar shops that are reminiscent of New York's Wall Street and the City of London, appears to be on full battle alert.
Metal sheeting covers bank windows and clients enter and leave through holes in the wall guarded by armed police -- an image that sums up Argentina's loss of faith not only in its political leadership, but the basic tenets of banking.
Bankers run a daily gauntlet of angry customers waving banners with the slogans "Give Back our Deposits!" and "Thieves!" Many Argentines swear they will never again trust a bank.
As they change available cash into dollars, they are equally distrustful of the local peso currency that was devalued in January and halved against the dollar after more than a decade of being pegged at a one-to-one rate.
Tempers are short. Unguarded banks are frequently targeted by irate crowds throwing eggs, bricks, Molotov cocktails, hammers and even rolling pins -- actions that led the banking association to take out a newspaper advertisement imploring demonstrators not to harm its employees.
Not surprisingly, bankers' jobs have changed since Latin America's third-largest economy dropped into an economic abyss in December, and a cash freeze was ordered to plug a run on banks that had already seen a quarter of their deposits disappear.
With savings confiscated and cash withdrawals limited to US$1,500 a month, unrest boiled over. Blamed for mismanagement of the economy, President Fernando de la Rua, as well as his immediate successor, Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, were forced to resign amid riots and looting that left 27 people dead.
One European bank's local analyst, working from a five-star hotel in the suburbs and only occasionally venturing into town, says his job description has been radically altered: "Calls come in daily from Europe asking me if there has been a coup. We economists have become sociologists and political scientists."
Global banking giant HSBC's head of Argentine operations, Briton Mike Smith, told reporters he was "managing the business on a crisis-survival basis, trying to stay one step ahead."
With a Tres de Febrero University poll showing that over 70 percent of respondents have no intention of ever again putting their money in a bank, financial institutions are struggling to keep up with the permitted withdrawals, while continuing to deal with wages and payment of bills.
In one fell swoop, the financial system has lost all the safeguards implemented in the 1990s, when an autonomous Central Bank imposed strict reserve requirements to protect depositors from a disaster such as Mexico's 1994-'95 currency devaluation.
There was a massive run on banks during the "tequila crisis" but the money came back eventually to a consolidated sector where all but one of the biggest private banks are now foreign-owned. With the evolution of a modern economy, wages were starting to be paid via banks and homes were bought with checks instead of wads of cash.
But since the savings freeze, said HSBC's Smith, "a whole generation trained to get a degree, get a job, get a mortgage and live in the first world has been destroyed and is asking: `Where are my savings, where is my future?'"
Facing what he estimated would be a lengthy recovery, the British banker said: "Liquidity is the name of the game, running the thing on a completely cash-flow basis."
"They [the demonstrators] appear to want to destroy the financial system," said the head of one foreign bank in an office near historic Plaza de Mayo, scene of December's riots and ongoing daily protests.
On the plaza stands the pink palace now occupied by Eduardo Duhalde, who on being appointed president in January pinned the blame for Argentina's ills on foreign bankers. But, Duhalde has since played down fears that he is a throwback to the nationalist, populist roots of his Peronist Party.
"You can't run an economy without a financial system, but the way they are going at the moment, I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel," said the banker, apologizing for his "casual" attire -- an open-necked shirt and suede shoes, accessorized with a gold watch.
His aides were tensely awaiting a "raid" by federal judges investigating foreign banks for allegedly bypassing capital restrictions to channel out an estimated US$500 million.
The charge of "economic subversion" invented by the last dictatorship has been revived to order executives from six banks -- including US, Brazilian and Canadian banks -- from leaving the country. Bank vaults have been raided and eight top foreign and local executives ordered to testify.
Television showed "secret" footage of bank managers offering to help withdraw cash and an investigating judge, Maria Servini de Cubria, saying: "This crime exists, and it is time to prosecute it because of the state our economy is in."
Bankers argue they are being made scapegoats for depositors' wrath which, they say, should be aimed at past and present officials who introduced or maintain the savings freeze. Foreign bankers want the cash restrictions lifted and say they are prevented from returning savers' funds to save hard-pushed local banks.
"Some banks will fall," said one banker. "They will kill the banks, but the banks have been killed already."
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