Argentina's new president, Mr Fernando de la Rua, has withdrawn state subsidies to trade unions and raised health and public transport costs. Yet his approval ratings are higher than when he took office two months ago.
The president's austere ruling style is popular with Argentinians after a decade of conspicuous state consumption under his predecessor, Mr Carlos Menem.
Argentina's Central Workers' Union (CGT), discredited after 10 years of collaboration with Mr Menem, received a $360 million (£288 million) windfall from the outgoing president a week before he left office.
The CGT suddenly recovered its radical edge, rejecting labour reform legislation and threatening a national strike.
When Mr De la Rua took office he cancelled the union funds and challenged the CGT leadership to call a referendum on labour reform, an offer greeted with deafening silence.
Argentina's State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) saw its budget increase tenfold from 1989 to 1999 under President Menem, who kept renowned repressors from the military era on the state payroll rather than have them loose on the streets.
Mr Fernando Santibanes, the new SIDE director, announced this week that 1,000 employees had been let go, out of a total of 3,200. Mr Santibanes also announced that bodyguards had been assigned to protect his children.
Mr Menem's presidential jet, Tango 01, purchased for $66 million, has been put up for sale, although no takers have yet appeared. Mr De La Rua flies on commercial airlines, albeit in first class.
Tango 01 carries 200 people and comes equipped with gold-plated taps and a giant bed. The price was slashed by two-thirds. Meanwhile, Mr Menem is champing at the bit, holding weekly "cabinet" meetings with former ministers, to analyse current events and plot ways to prevent his rivals from seizing control of the Peronist party apparatus.
Mr Menem's daughter, Zulemita, has also been in the news, as an investigation was called into the origins of $100,000 she spent on a brief holiday in Uruguay last month.
On the regional front, Mr De la Rua has promised to "re-launch" Mercosur, the common market linking Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. Hundreds of medium-sized businesses have abandoned Argentina, eager to benefit from cheaper production costs caused by last year's currency devaluation in Brazil, and relations between Mercosur's two major partners have been very strained over the past eight months.
Mr De La Rua enjoys public support for now, but crime, hunger, declining salary levels and rising unemployment are urgent issues which will determine his long-term success.