Buenos Aires

Markets vs. Kirchner: Argentina’s stock market and currency plummeted this week after election primaries suggested that former

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner could return to power, this time as vice president to her little-known running mate

Alberto Fernández (no relation). Their leftist ticket took 47 percent of the vote, while conservative President Mauricio Macri took 32 percent. The primaries function mostly as an opinion poll for the October presidential vote, because the parties have already chosen candidates. Argentina’s S&P Merval Index dropped 48 percent in a single day—the second-largest drop of any major stock index since 1950—and the peso sank 15 percent against the dollar.

Macri says he is trying to wrest the country out of a decade of mismanagement by Kirchner and her predecessor, her late husband, Néstor Kirchner. But inflation is at 50 percent, and Macri’s austerity measures are deeply unpopular.