The political scene in the sky-blue and white nation is hotter than ever since the arrival of Javier Milei to the Pink House. To begin with, even in media favorable to the current owner of the Rivadavia's armchair, excellent and spicy analyses are being published—like this one—on the management of his government, immersed in a comprehensive crisis. The article I have just referenced is signed by the great journalist Carlos Pagni, and there he talks about Milei on two levels.
In the first one, the president is the prophet, the one who points out the luminous path that awaits the Argentines if they get out alive from the Via Crucis that his fiscal austerity policies entail. In this dimension there is also the showman, who sings rock, meets with the Silicon Valley big guys, brutally attacks the left, and lectures on the Austrian school and the market at Stanford. Many are attached to this Moses-like Milei, especially the young, although Canaan, the land of milk and honey, is not yet on the horizon.
The second dimension in which Pagni and other analysts understand Milei has to do with his concrete function as head of state, which sometimes seems to be reduced to enumerating the sins of Kirchnerism. Claudio Jacquelin argues that the president and his government already have their own past, and their political capital could begin to erode as the idea that the sacrifice was not and will not be worth it begins to take hold.
While the adjustment continues to hit the liver area of the most vulnerable, criminality increases and worries. “There are people who fall out of the system and reoffend,” officials say. Experts report incipient symptoms of social fatigue in the poorest neighborhoods, more drug and alcohol consumption, and more mental health problems, although it is not delimited how these dynamics have been accentuated over time. However, the potential recovery would land later precisely in those regions where the needs are most pressing.
This Thursday, the IMF has quietly warned Buenos Aires that “policies will have to evolve”, and that the liberal train must work to broaden political support for its reforms. From Washington, they seem to be carefully gauging the social climate. "I'm a guy who [works], but I don't [make] ends meet with [my income]. And the truth is that the rulers are not remembering much about people from the middle class down,” says an Argentine forced to go to a soup kitchen to feed himself. Eat or pay the rent. Eat or pay water and electricity rates.
Female workers in a soup kitchen (source).But the Minister of Economy affirms that “the worst” is over. It would be necessary to see, always, for whom. Luis Caputo points to the 20 and 30-year mortgage loans that banks have started to offer, to the fiscal surplus, and to the single-digit inflation reported in April, but this shows once again that the focus of the Government of La Libertad Avanza is very much on macroeconomics. There is no concrete policy to convert these Austrian “achievements” into decent jobs and food for the poor, who according to recent estimates are already half of the Argentine population. The market will do its thing, one supposes.
“Every time that the fiscal degenerates of politics want to break the fiscal balance, I will veto everything. I don't give a damn!”, Milei advanced about a reform of the payment to retirees approved in the lower house of the legislature. He also anticipated that he would fire yet another 50,000 Argentines who are “surplus” in the government payroll. In his prophet phase, full of futuristic Silicon Valley technology, he says that if “the right institutions” are created, Argentina will be the first world power in forty years.
🔴Milei insistió sobre la reforma jubilatoria: "Les voy a vetar todo, me importa tres carajos". Más información: https://t.co/hp7E9KVe5L pic.twitter.com/0ihtIelqAJ
— Ámbito Financiero (@Ambitocom) June 5, 2024
So, Milei proposes a lax regulatory environment for sectors such as AI, which he sees as a potential ally—specifically via Google—even to reform the Argentine State itself. Perhaps ChatGPT could quickly tell him how to start such an enterprise in his Ministry of Human Capital, where he has a female minister and friend who wants to move to Mars after it was discovered that tons of expired and soon-to-expire food was being stored, while people starve. That's the way things are—at the moment—in the Albiceleste nation.
And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
