Yup, I had serious doubt about it but this is the third time I’m seeing it live in front of my eyes.
Though I’m not so sure about “looting the IMF”, the IMF has its own reasons to loan them money, and usually gets paid, with interests.
These last 2 cycles may end up exploding in the IMF’s face though, after the last cycle it was ill advised to continue to lend us money, I think the first Trump admin did it’s usual thing and influenced the IMF to go against its better judgment, and it’s probably doing so again.
The problem is that there is no way that Argentina can paid the debt they’ve acquired, they are kicking the can down the road with new loans for now but sooner or later there will be another default.
I would guess “small town sensation” is meant to be a form of humblebrag.
The Canadian equivalent was a lawyer from small town Quebec who was a shrewd national politician and tough operator. He became Prime Minister, and was proud of trying to choke a protestor who accosted him. He referred to himself as the “little guy” (p’tit gars) “from Shawnigan”. Trying to emphasize humble roots, but really his personal brilliance in succeeding nationally.
A bit off topic, perhaps, but I had to think of this thread when I read this story:
So I thought I recommend it here to all who read Spanish. It is the kind of true story that gives a little hope in times like this, the life of Simon Radowitzky. Most of the story takes place in an Argentinian prison at the end of the world, in Ushuaia, but it is a universal, a global story.
ETA: I see there is an English edition too.
I knew about him, but I had him confused/merged in my mind with Kurt Wilckens another anarchist who avenged another massacre (this one in the Patagonia strikes of 1921).
In sad news, legislative elections in the Buenos Aires Autonomous City (not the province, just the city) were won by 3 points by Milei’s party, (at the cost of the traditional right who is suprised to see that the same thing that happened to the german right in the 30’s and the american right in the 2010s is happening to them…)
Since we have proportional representation this is not a complete disaster, the runner up list is by a represntative of the true opposition (sorta of a mix between peronism, non-sellout centrists and the left) and in fact the opposition gained a couple of seats (seats, again, lost by the traditional right)
But is surely infuriating to see 30% of voters chose as their representative the same fucking man who joked about “dissapearing” the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo university.
Even more worrying turnout was a extremely low (for Argentina) 54% of all voters, people seem just nauseated with the whole business of democracy, something that can only help fascists.
Matthew Yglesias has out today a middle-of-the-road American perspective on Argentina under Milei:
This is the U.S. conventional wisdom on Argentina that, correct or mistaken, I have read many times before:
I’d at least consider the “tough love” viewpoint if it weren’t for the obvious (and also Trump-like) failed Crypto currency scam, his corruption-prone Supreme Court Pick, and cuts to more-or-less essential services to the lowest incomes (which don’t have a substantial comparative cost) while raising funding for intelligence forces.
But since these and other actions speak against his motives, yeah, not so much. Don’t get me wrong, I agree and understand that Argentina has substantial economic issues, and suspect that @Frodo and the other actual residents agree (that the issues exist that is), but the “How” and “Why” of Milei’s government is incredibly suspect.
I haven’t been posting in this thread because it really really depresses me.
This
The lesson of Argentina is that one of the richest countries in the world at the start of the 20th century lost that status thanks to generations of bad technical choices and has struggled to get itself back on track.
Is the conventional wisdom of the right, may be on the left too, depending on what you think were the “bad technical choices”. The right thinks that Peronism and all that implies (workers rights, a welfare state, powerful unions) has been the cause while the left thinks that the “bad technical choices” long predate Peronism and were not using the “riches” of the early 20th century to industrialize the country, getting constantly in debt to international capital, and the general “colony vocation” of the ruling classes.
(And if you go really to the left, is all that plus Peronism, offering a false succedaneum of prosperity to the lower class and thus preventing The Revolution).
The truth is hard to discern, in my experience (born in 1978), the right comes in, retracts worker’s rights, lowers tariffs (thus decimating local industries), pays retirees starvation salaries, generates a lot of misery, lowers inflation (if not for other reason because there’s no money for consumers to buy things with), accumulates a lot of debt trying to keep the dollar low (because their only success they can tout is “economic stability”) until the international markets get spooked, the IMF closes the dollar spigot and everything goes to shit.
While Peronists come in, fix the ravages made to the welfare state (but not to the state it was before), pay the debt, eventually get in a deficit, emit money, the dollar and inflation go up, the middle class gets spooked and elects the right again.
Lather rinse repeat.
I was fully prepared to the cycle to repeat again but what scares me is that this time the right is not merely the usual group of free marketeers, union haters and the like but genuinely fascist in a way that hadn’t been seen since I was too little to recall.
So far the fascists tendencies while too high, have not been as bad as I feared, in real effects at least, the rhetoric is obviously extremely repugnant.
The best I could hope for, as I said at the beginning of this thread was for a moderate Peronist government to be elected, rein on spending (or maybe (gasp!) raise taxes!) and control inflation, but it was not to be.
Now the government is in the part of the cycle where controlling (to a pretty dismal 1.6% monthly) inflation and the dollar (thanks to an enormous IMF loan that only Diego knows how we are going to pay!) gets them enough credibility to win the upcoming legislative elections.
If and when they do… well I’m honestly afraid.
They were able to take a wrecking ball to the state in a way that eerily resembles what Trump and Musk later did in the USA while being in the minority in congress, what are they going to do with a majority?
The money to control the dollar is going to run out just before o just after the elections so they are going to have to devaluate the peso with the corresponding inflation.
They are not going to fight the suffering that will cause with any kind of intervention in the markets, nor are they going to let the notoriously weakened union bargain freely for better wages.
If their only economic claim to success falls by the wayside, I fear that they are going to go for broke in their “anti-woke” tendencies.
All in all, I really really hope I’m wrong on where things are going.
Also “one of the riches countries in the world”, is as I said before a mirage, an illusion caused by the global context of the time, Milei and his ilk use it as the typical “Golden Age” so beloved by fascists but the truth is that prosperity based on exporting meat and hides could not last.
The Left’s argument has always been, and the more I observe the Right’s rhetoric and actions the more I think they have a point, is that the right wants to go back to that “prosperity” by turning Argentina into a net exporter country with a small population, like we were in 1910, say 15, to 20 million inhabitants, tops, and that they don’t care what happens to the other 25 million “surplus” citizens. Considering the fascist rhetoric of this last bunch I shudder to consider what their plans could be “in extremis” (You can guess the skin color of the “surplus” population on their minds).
That said I don’t think they are (the majority of them) actually genocidal, the extra 20 million people can be stacked in “villas miseria” (favelas, ghettos) and forgotten there.
It seems that reports of Peronism’s death were greatly exaggerated.
(LLA is Milei’s party)
Sounds conditionally good, any hints that there’s going to be accusations of dead people voting, irregularities, or other efforts to overturn those results? And I know from the reporting, this is somewhat like a Republican winning the popular vote in a deeply Blue area, but at least it reports similar trends elsewhere.
My concern is that based on @Frodo’s own reporting, is that even when elected, far too many seem to vote against their elector’s preferences, due to pressure, bribery or what have you in prior efforts, so … is it too soon to hope?
Milei just recognized defeat, blaming it on “the peronist machine”, but staying short of claiming fraud.
It’s more like Democrats winning in blue states after losing them and having the republicans proclaim them dead.
Always a risk, but.
This is being taken as a reversal of the political sentiment in the country, the kind of opportunist you mention will think it twice before betraying their voters because the winds, they are a-changing.
Then I’ll quiet my worries and hope for the best. So not champagne time, but still a legitimate chance for change.
This was a provincial (think state) legislative election, in October we have the national legislative election, if things continue in this vein Milei will finally know what it is to govern without legislative cover.
Good to see what I gather are encouraging signs.
A lot of posts in twitter/blue sky along the lines of “what is this strange feeling? is this ‘optimism’?”
After Milei’s party defeat in the Buenos Aires legislative state elections, and before an assumed defeat in the national legislative elections in late October the opposition smells blood in the water.
The president vetoes on the laws requiring funding for pediatric hospitals and universities are being discussed in congress, and there’s a very real possibility than at least one of them will be overridden.
Meanwhile the dollar is threatening to rise above the administration’s accorded with the IMF “band” of 1500 pesos even with the self same admin selling dollars (from the self same IMF) desperately to keep the value low.
Argentinian bonds and actions are falling quickly.
In the midst of all this an (expected to be huge) demonstration has been called to pressure congress to override the veto and fund the universities.
I’m planning on getting out of the office early and going to the march.
As always:
“I’m bored”
“you were”
Trying to make sense of this I am going to guess that by actions you mean shares?
Take care when on the march, desperate regimes do stupid things. But turn the heat on them, what happens in Argentina shows the way for what could happen elsewhere!
Yes sorry I was in a hurry and fell for a flase friend.
In other news: both vetoes overriden!