Milei to the Rescue in Argentina, Or Just More Hot Air?
Milei’s supporters will expect him to live up to his lavish promises, and quickly
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Argentina’s voters elected former television commentator Javier Milei as their president in a runoff election on 19 November.
Milei, who the media projected as a far-right populist, regularly wielded a chainsaw as a campaign prop, pledging to slash the federal budget and cut down government agencies and erase the country’s ministries of culture, diversity, and education.
He also promised to abolish the central bank, which he accused of printing an endless supply of worthless money, and to ditch the Argentine peso in favor of the U.S. dollar.
His platform includes cutting regulations on gun possession and putting the military in charge of the country’s prison system as part of his tough-on-crime stance. He wants to use public tax dollars to subsidize parents who home-school their children.
Milei has made other vast promises to transform not just the country’s economy but also to relieve the misery that afflicts the 40 percent of Argentinians officially living in poverty. However, his new political party has only a few seats in the legislature. He probably will have to negotiate and compromise to persuade the legislature to enact even part of his program
He also plans to privatize health care, which in Argentina has long been a public program.
Milei opposes abortion rights and has called evidence of climate change “a lie of socialism.”
“Today we turn the page on our history and we return to the path that we should never have lost,” Milei told a crowd of ecstatic supporters after the election’s results were announced. “Today we retake the path that made this country great.”
“Make Argentina great again!” former U.S. president Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “I’m very proud of you.”
Milei defeated incumbent Sergio Massa, the country’s economy minister at a time when Argentina’s inflation reached an annual pace of 142 percent. Massa’s argument that the government was gradually making the economy better failed to persuade voters.
Milei won the election by 11 points and will take office on 10 December.
TRENDPOST: Other countries using the U.S. dollar as their own currency include Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Zimbabwe. Argentina will be the largest.
Converting its nearly $500-billion economy from one currency to another will be complex and tricky.
Milei has made other vast promises to transform not just the country’s economy but also to relieve the misery that afflicts the 40 percent of Argentinians officially living in poverty. However, his new political party has only a few seats in the legislature. He probably will have to negotiate and compromise to persuade the legislature to enact even part of his program.
In contrast, Milei’s supporters will expect him to live up to his lavish promises, and quickly. The country’s mess has left tempers short. If he does not deliver, his honeymoon with his voters will be brief and they may return to the streets to complain about him as they did his predecessor.
TREND FORECAST: Considering Argentina’s debt load, and its sky-high inflation in the face of a global economic slowdown, we forecast that Milei’s plan to revive the nation’s economy will prove to be more talk than action.
Milei's suggestion of using the troubled American dollar is a head scratcher. But he says all the right things re downsizing the corrupt & suffocating government bureaucracy. If he's a WEF guy, then he's a put up job. But if he's legit, I'll hope he actually carries out the campaign promises.
It pays to be cynical & skeptical even as one can hope Milei might prove to be what he purports to be. I'll hope cautiously in this case that Milei manages to defy your expectations, but your track record is strong and we are being played by endless Ops and scams from every direction. So far the only thing to celebrate is the Argentine populace showing some have been red-pilled.
This love affair with the Argentinan guy is curious to me.
He’s a Klaus Schwab WEF guy.
No matter what comes out of his mouth, at the end of the day he will do what his owners tell him.