Monday, July 22, four current and former bank directors representing the International Monetary Fund (IMF/FMI) began meetings at a hotel in Buenos Aires to discuss the Argentine banking system and economic crisis. The representatives, portrayed as "the commission of notables," perhaps to downplay their connections to the IMF, include Andrew Crockett, director of the standard-setting BIS, Hans Tietmeyer, Luis Angel Rojo and John Crow, former directors of the central banks of Germany, Spain, and Canada, respectively.

IMF, as well as the Duhalde governement and Argentine banks, are demanding Argentina to freeze the bank savings of millions of persons for conversion into unspecified bonds, as well as other 'austerity' measures including the reversal of judicial orders, in order to release billions of dollars in withheld loans.

e than 10,000 people, including piqueteros, workers, and retirees protested the arrival of the "notables" and their policy demands. They marched [1 | 2] from the Obelisco to a Sheraton Hotel surrounded by riot police, demanding that the IMF representatives leave the country immediately. One speaker demanded that "the only thing the IMF must take is Duhalde and all the politicians who in the last twenty years operated and sacked the country, in complicity with the multinationals."