Well, here, I owe a better explanation to Zack, who is both possibly keen or obtuse.
He is entirely correct to say the problem isn't specifically socialism. Indeed, the problem is a good deal more specific; the Argentine government spent far more money than it could hope to pay back and there were foreign financiers dumb enough to underwrite it. That said, I do not believe Argentina to be a land beset by any more than a fairly commonplace frequency of ignorance and laziness. The real problem for average Argentines, apart from a globally and frequently noted tendency to be obtrusive, overbearing, and annoying ( not crimes in and of themselves) is that they were dumb enough to elect a government that wracked up a hefty f'in fee. That government has defaulted on this debt, a kind of mixed blessing for the citizenry but a real disaster in some other ways ( eg, try that trick twice...).
Coming back around to the point of departure, yes, it is entirely possible for a government to overspend withou being specifically socialist... But, in Argentine under either Kirchner, there were both...
