Children in a nursery school are kicking balls, bouncing on toys and building towers with coloured blocks. They have been asked: what is the IMF? “Horses,” says one. “A satellite,” ventures another . . . “that has crashed into the moon,” adds a third. No, “a country where everything is upside down,” says a fourth.

This is, of course, no ordinary pre-school. The children’s carefully scripted answers belong to a television advertisement for Cristina Fernández, wife of Argentine President Néstor Kirchner and the woman universally expected to be elected on Sunday to succeed him. “We’re making sure that your children, and your children’s children, have no idea what the IMF is,” says an off-screen voice. “We don’t need foreigners to come and lend to us, but to come here more and more to invest.”