The Argentine uprising that toppled the democratically elected government of Fernando de la Rúa on Dec. 19 had the whole world witnessing a rapid-fire transition of five presidents within days, highlighting Argentina's political and economic instability.

Tragedy usually comes accompanied by comedy. The president designated by the parliament to replace de la Rúa immediately created a new currency, the argentino. This would have been the fifth currency in concurrent operation. When asked what financial guarantees the new currency would have, he proposed that they be assets of the federal government, including the Casa Rosada (seat of the executive branch), and Argentine embassy buildings abroad. Needless to say, this ephemeral presidency, toppled by new middle-class cacerolazos (kitchen pot-banging demonstrations), will be remembered as a tragic joke.

The government of Fernando de la Rúa, clinging to the policies of his famous Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo, collapsed when the middle classes protested the virtual freezing of their assets (roughly $50 billion) deposited in Argentine banks, an extreme measure taken by Cavallo to prevent the total collapse of the banks or a run against their meager reserves.

With one of the largest external debts in Latin America (about $145 billion), it is estimated that $120 billion has been exported by Argentines attempting to protect their own assets. Whether that figure is accurate is difficult to assess, but what is clear is that a perverse combination of political mismanagement, the voracity of Argentine capitalists and the untimely and equivocal economic measures by the de la Rúa/Cavallo administration further complicated an already complex situation with growing unemployment, poverty and a high level of personal and urban insecurity for the middle classes.

What's more, the generation of Argentine politicians that emerged in the post-dictatorship years ending with the democratic election of Raul Alfonsín in 1983, has proven remarkably inept and corrupt. And the administration of Carlos Menem, who preceded de la Rúa, becomes emblematic of the privatization of public enterprises. What was to have been a strategy to reduce the external debt and state expenditures ended up being a strategy for private capital accumulation, corruption, bribes and the creation of mafias.

It would be naïve to think that the Argentine malaise is the product of only a weak economy or corrupt political system. For more than a decade, Argentina was the darling of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the incarnation of their neo-liberal policies, sometimes cited as a textbook case of the new economic expertise brought about by globalization.

At the turn of the 20th century, Argentina was considered one of the richest countries in the world. Now in shambles, her citizens' spirits broken, and with few economic and political options on the horizon, this country, so ecologically rich and diverse in natural resources, is teetering on the brink of social breakdown.

The diagnosis of the future cannot be but somber, and I am afraid that both the Argentine politicians and the multinational financial institutions responsible -- through their arrogance, political and economic mistakes and greed -- have not learned their lesson. The Argentine people have, but tragically are paying the price.

Torres is director of the Latin American Center.