Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president
Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president
Milei is pledging economic shock therapy, including shutting the central bank, ditching the peso and slashing spending. His challenges will be enormous: Empty coffers, a $44 billion debt program with the IMF, 150% inflation and more.
Javier Milei is:
-
Against abortion (except when mother's life is in danger)
-
Against sex-ed and wants to eliminate it (says it deforms people's minds)
-
Denies climate change (says it's an invention of socialism)
-
Anti-vax (But got vaxxed in Nov 2021 because otherwise he would not be able to work in other countries)
-
Wants to fuse the departments of Social Development, Health and Education into a single department of Human Capital.
-
In favor of Austrian school of economics - Wants to remove the central bank
-
Adopt the US dollar
-
Homosexuality is a personal choice and compares it to zoophilia
-
In favor of drug legalization and to opening up immigration as long as it doesn't cost the State.
-
In favor of people paying for sex
-
In favor of gun ownership without governmental limitations
-
Wants to freeze relationships with China, Russia, Brazil because they're communists.
-
Wants to align with the US, particularly Trump's party.
-
Against the Pope because he represents evil on Earth, and because it promotes communism which goes against the holy scriptures.
-
In favor of animal cloning
-
In favor of organ selling
Good luck Argentina
Sounds like he made his own conservatism, with hookers and blow?
No, that sounds like traditional conservatism. Conservatism has no redeeming qualities, but they can buy good PR easily.
Me: wow most of these not surprising but yeah they’re fucked.
Against the pope because communism is against scriptures: fucking lol what.
That's. That's quite a platform.
Excuse me does he think zoophilia is a personal choice?
And yeah good luck Argentina. I’m sure you’ll have positive results from this
Ancaps are for selling children (doesn't matter the reason). Non-human animals are already commodities for sale, so zoophilia wouldn't be an issue.
What is the rationale behind switching to the US dollar? I sort of get why US libertarians are opposed to fiat currency (they don't want the Fed to have the power to interfere in markets), but Milei just wants to switch to a fiat currency that someone else controls? What makes him think that would end well for Argentina?
Argentina's runaway inflation is caused by the central bank printing money (to finance the government's out of control spending). The rationale for dollarization is to remove the ability for the government to do this. It's not an inherently crazy idea, since (i) there are smaller Latin American countries that use the dollar, and (ii) the dollar is already used de facto for many purposes in Argentina because of how debased the peso has been. But there are lots of practical problems; notably, Argentina simply does not own enough dollars in the entire country to keep the economy running normally if they switch (whatever "normally" means for an economy like theirs).
It's because every time the argentinian government needs to pay something, and don't have the cash to do that, they print some billions and pay it. By literally printing monopoly money in huge quantity, they're devaluing their currency every time they print a batch.
The rationale is that if they're using the us dollar, the inflation will stop because it's controlled externally
But by using the us dollar, every time the argentinian government needs to pay something and doesn't have the cash to do that, need to borrow some heavy debt (at insane interest rate given their history where they didn't repay previous debts)
And would need an huge quantity of them in a short time to exchange and dispose the pesos from people and banks
If it was as easy as "just don't print monopoly money" they would have solved it.
Maybe it would be easier to just stop printing money than officially switching to a different currency
Politicians here don't hesitate on printing money to pay for things. Always have, and probably always will. He wants to take that possibility from their hands.
like zimbawee i think foir make a "stability" in the curency. (still worth nothing)
Milei is a whack job that makes Trump and Bolsonaro look like good, sane leaders.
-
Desperate people make poor but desperate choices. 150% inflation? Goddamn, people here are freaking out about 5%...
There was a thread a couple days ago about how do you see the world ending. It's stuff like this, situation will het worse and worse so people will turn to crazier and crazier solutions.
We're all in for an interesting next few decades.
I predict that Argentinians are going to like this even less in the long run than the stuff the Peronists have gotten up to
I can get the annoyance with how the economy has been... but jeez, what is the real solution here? I can't see much of anything positive coming out of this.
I assume that, just like with trump, they won't admit that they were bamboozled and will just double down with the crazy.
Most likely. That seems to be the pattern.
Can someone explain me this? In Argentina, the majority of the workers are employed by government (crazy rate of employment by a government, I don't think they actually need all those people), but then the majority of the voters elect someone that plans to cut spending a lot, meaning most of those workers that voted him will be laid off.
Make Argentina Great Again.
Sad to see people fall for the same bullshit over and over.
Can we theorize a situation where an average Argentinian voter consciously chooses a short term crisis with the prospect of normalization over a lifetime stagnation and decay? Argentina's economy was shit for a long time, and maybe people's intent is to wreck things for a change?
You really think the average and below person is going to be able go make that connection?
clown world
Ugh. The way that generally centre-right economic policy wonks are celebrating Milei's election is grotesque.
I get that dollarization would probably be good for Argentina.
Even as a leftist, I'm open to the possibility that an anti-Peronist economic policy could save the country - I doubt they could survive another Peronist.
But Milei is the worst kind of MAGA wingnut. He's a talk-radio shock jock. It's like if they elected Tucker Carlson or Don Cherry into the casa rosada.
His one possibly-good policy idea doesn't overshadow that.
It'll be a miracle if in the next year alone he doesn't completely obliterate what's left of Argentina's economy.
Look I understand, I really do.
When I was a kid, I was told to beware of clothes irons because they are hot.
But one day, curiosity got the better of me, and I touched the damn thing to see if it was hot. Hurt like hell, still have the scar to this day. But I don't touch hot surfaces anymore.
Go on Argentina, touch the iron :)
Maybe this time it will be different. (Inset some weird emoji that denotes is won’t with a mix of sadness, regret, and ennui)
Ron Howard voice: It wasn't.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Official results showed Milei with near 56% versus 44% for his rival, Peronist Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who conceded in a speech.
His plans include shutting the central bank, ditching the peso, and slashing spending, potentially painful reforms that resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise.
"Milei is the new thing, he's a bit of an unknown and it is a little scary, but it's time to turn over a new page," said 31-year-old restaurant worker Cristian as he voted on Sunday.
He will have to deal with the empty coffers of the government and central bank, a creaking $44 billion debt program with the International Monetary Fund, inflation nearing 150% and a dizzying array of capital controls.
"The election marks a profound rupture in the system of political representation in Argentina," said Julio Burdman, director of the consultancy Observatorio Electoral, ahead of the vote.
Supporters of Massa, 51, an experienced political wheeler-dealer, had sought to appeal to voter fears about Milei's volatile character and "chainsaw" plan to cut back the size of the state.
The original article contains 629 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
They will end up eating pebbles and screws.
Time to bankrupt a country to pay off venture capital debts!
Worked out great for the last guy to acquiesce to American interests...
Am I allowed to draw a parallelism with last year's elections in Italy? More than 50% of Argentinians have Italian ancestry, no wonder they naturally lean towards fascism.
If by shock therapy you mean the electric chair...