banned russian oligarchs and ramana abramovich on the breeze birdsall states like a timeout and a multi-billion dollar court battle in london where evidence has turned the spotlight on the trade to business dealings of the. headlines up next here on our talk show and on this edition of his guest debate on how the latest changes in the walls financial system have influenced global politics.

argument that seemed the most cogent to me was that argentina was -- this was the term used by nancy birdsal the president of economic development. she said argentina was the spoiled child of the washington consensus. because it had been so admired for its reforms, it -- it had been indulged by the international powers that be, you know, the imf and the world bank and there were policies that were quite risky. and more specifically i was really impressed with the argument -- and this is advanced most prominently by michael muffa of the imf and he was very critical of his former employer. and he said the imf should have been much tougher. and in the 1990s they enjoyed a boom from 1996 to 1998. and it should have been -- you make hay while the sun shines, right? and storing up the grains for the hard winter ahead. i'm mixing my metaphors here. his point was, you know, specifically they should have had a much more disciplined budget policy. they even should have been running budget surpluses. was argentina so terribly prolivegate in the 1990s. i think that's an unfair term to use. the budget de