Wait, what?
In the third quarter Argentina’s GDP grew by 3.9 percent over the previous quarter, more than the 3.4 percent that was expected. This follows earlier signs of improvement and reinforces hopes of strong growth next year, albeit from a deep trough. Year-on-year, the quarterly numbers still show a decline of 2 percent (compared with the third quarter of 2023), but recovery must start somewhere…
Read MoreTen or so months on, Argentina’s Javier Milei is still pressing on with his reforms, but even though the Argentine system gives a lot of power to the president, it doesn’t help that his still young party (LLA — La Libertad Avanza) only has 15 percent of the seats in Argentina’s lower house and about 10 percent in the Senate. Even with the help of allies it can only exercise some degree of control via ad hoc blocking minorities.
Midterms are due late next year, and, if a recent poll in Buenos Aires province is any indication (not that much: the midterms won’t be held until October next year, an eon away under current circumstances) the LLA should increase its representation significantly, although still well short of a majority…
Read MoreNot long after taking office, Argentine president Javier Milei went to Davos, where he gave a memorable (#understatement) speech…
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I was in a large, packed room in the Hilton. A conference held in June by the Cato Institute and an Argentine free-market think tank, Libertad y Progreso, had entered its final hours. Elon Musk had just spoken — remotely. Now self-styled anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, Argentina’s president since December, had turned up, clad in a suit, not his trademark leather jacket, and, considerably calmer than his reputation, was giving a speech…
There are those, I suppose, who still think of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos as some kind of capitalist jamboree, but it is far better seen as a gathering not of capitalists — or at least capitalists in any free market sense of that word — but of corporatists.
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