Two Views of a Firing; The Lavagna affair is local. The fallout could be global.(Roberto Lavagna)

Byline: Mac Margolis and Brian Byrnes

It's not necessarily about you. Global investors would do well to remember that as they watch the unfolding melodrama in Argentina. When quixotic President Nestor Kirchner fired his Finance minister, Roberto Lavagna, last week, the immediate fear from New York to Tokyo was that Kirchner was out to stick it to Argentina's international creditors once again. Poised and polyglot, Lavagna had put out the fires set by Kirchner in confrontations with the IMF and other creditors in the aftermath of Argentina's record $103 billion default in 2001. Now Kirchner, newly emboldened by an October victory in local elections, was replacing Lavagna with an unknown banker. Quite a way to thumb his nose at Wall Street.

This story line ignores a few salient points, however. Lavagna's successor, Felisa Miceli, is also his onetime protegee, and is said to share his policy views, if not his political muscle. True, she recently described herself as "a soldier for Kirchner," and as president of Banco de la Nacion, Argentina's largest, she earned a reputation as a team player. But she's an unlikely choice if Kirchner intends a radical shift in policy. In Buenos Aires, the firing is seen as a local row: Lavagna's political godfather is Kirchner's archrival Eduardo Duhalde, whose wing of the Peronist Party suffered defeat to Kirchner-backed candidates in October. This, in ...