2 dead as supermarket looting spreads in Argentina

He said that while Argentina still has poverty, it is nowhere "like the Argentina of 2001."

Thousands of people marched in front of the presidential palace earlier this week demanding the elimination of income tax, which many lower-paid workers never had to pay before but must now after receiving a salary hike earlier this year.

The demonstration was called by Hugo Moyano, the head of the powerful General Labor Confederation who was once a close ally of Fernandez but is now one of her fiercest critics.

"There's a reality that shows that people are not going through a good time," Moyano told local Radio Mitre. "We see it in the capital when the government handles this situation as if we were living the best year in Swiss history but when you see people living underneath highways."

Moyano accused the government of orchestrating the looting.

"This was staged by the government to victimize itself," Moyano said at a televised news conference.

"The president is out of sync," said Moyano, who in recent months has increasingly appeared alongside her political opponents and often speaks out against the government that he long championed.

Fernandez was re-elected with 54 percent of the vote last year, but her popularity has declined since she began digging ever deeper into the pockets of the middle and upper classes to finance her populist policies.

With inflation running at about 25 percent a year, Argentines have sought to change their pesos for dollars, but the government has cracked down on such trades and made it nearly impossible to obtain dollars legally.

Most Argentines surveyed in polls say they're most worried by a rise in crime and consumer prices and the strict currency controls.