Here are Milei’s first moves in Argentina
There are about ten days left until he takes office, but Javier Milei has already started preparing his government action. Here are the objectives and difficulties. The article by Livio Zanotti, author of Ildiavolononmuoremai
The movement is felt by going, suggests the president-elect Javier Milei, refractory to the statement made, to the criticism of the technicians, to the institutional practice. There are about ten days left until he takes over, but he has already jumped on a plane and off he goes…
His de facto presidency has begun, although he has not yet even completed his government, although it has been reduced to just 8 ministries. With Public Education, Health, Work and Social Security, Transport, Telecommunications, Energy combined in some undersecretariat. It's his way of keeping his promise to shrink the state on demand . It is less easy to do the same with politicians, no matter whether adversaries or allies, that "caste" that he wanted to destroy and with which he is now negotiating government positions and coexistence in institutions. Since his party, even adding the traditional right divided between Mauricio Macri and Patricia Bullrich – an outcome that is by no means a foregone conclusion – does not have any stable majority in Congress. Nor will it be easy to govern with decrees, as Diana Mondino, 65, just appointed Foreign Minister, casually told a worried Confindustria assembly.
MYSTIQUE AND DOLLARS IN THE MILEI AGENDA
There are mysticism and dollars (in logical and chronological order) on the agenda of Javier Milei's first lightning mission: to New York for a votive gathering at the tomb of the ultra-Orthodox rabbi Menachem Mendel, in Queens, where he had gone in look for good luck even when running for the Argentine presidency; and in Washington to try to extract other credits (US$ 12 billion?), reshape those soon to expire (December '23, January '24: US$ 6.4 billion) and offer counterparts to the bankers. Heavy budget cuts, a series of privatizations and carry-trades on the financial markets, it is said, without confirmation or denial. Then will come the turn of the Paris Club and all the Europeans. The intention to ratify the controversial MercoSur-EU trade treaty, signed in 2019 after twenty years of negotiations, has now been made known to them. The Peronist government considered it harmful to industrial employment and the defense of the environment, pretending to forget it in some drawer so as not to tear it up immediately. But even Lula's government in Brazil maintains strong doubts and in any case does not consider its approval to be on the agenda.
The journey remains shrouded in confidentiality even after it ends. His reasons are entrusted to the intuition and deductive capacity of observers. Even if preliminarily, it deals with vital financial issues for Argentina, but it is only unofficial; nor could it be otherwise. As coincidental as it is suggestive, the neighborhood on the Potomac River home to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the State Department and other buildings famous for political turmoil like Watergate is called Foggy Bottom . And immediately metaphysical is the context that encompassed the strictly personal visit made a few hours earlier by Milei to the memory of the Grand Rabbi Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Hasid movement Jabad (acronym of the three words that in Hebrew mean inspiration, understanding and conscience) Lubawitch, a trend of ultra-conservative Judaism, which through its own reading of the Torah pursues the unity of Jews throughout the world. Milei was born Christian and Apostolic-Roman Catholic; however, for some years he has moved closer to more traditionalist Judaism.
THE FLASH TRIP TO THE UNITED STATES
In the lightning-fast US incursion (48 hours in which he spoke with Bill Clinton – Obama and Trump unavailable -, then conversing with Jack Sullivan and Juan Gonzalez, Joe Biden's advisors for National Security and Latin America respectively), he accompanied a very small group. His ever-present sister Karina, 50, has been his only and greatest guide and admirer since adolescence: he introduces her to everyone as "the Boss". An economist with close friends on Wall Street , Luis Caputo, 56, who this mission consecrates as Minister of Economy of the new executive, after having been so with Mauricio Macri who assisted in the operation of the priceless maxi-indebtedness with the IMF for 44 billion of dollars, and of whom he has always been a family friend. The presidential chief of staff, Nicolas Posse, 58, an industrial engineer, like other members of the new government, comes from the world of large private business and in particular from Corporación America . Eduardo Eurnekian, 91, the billionaire who founded and controls it, is the great figure of the Argentine economic establishment who, after having him as a collaborator, sponsored the advent of Javier Milei to the country's highest judiciary.
THE RISK OF ARGENTINA
The risk index of the new Argentine government is considered the highest in the last twenty years, even in the economic and political circles that celebrated its undoubted electoral victory. Milei is also an effect of this risk, albeit an abnormal one. The cause is much older. It has roots in the historical distortions of an exclusionary economic model, in the social exasperations that have resulted from it. Only in some periods has the ability to build a sustainable path to development prevailed. In the new millennium, starting from the 2008 crisis, the most advanced part of the West began to build an unprecedented production system based on new technologies. Argentina (and the whole of Latin America) has found neither private nor state enterprise initiatives and resources to modernize its industrialization. Losing (it is worth repeating) jobs, professional qualities, added value: less wealth in the face of a further demographic increase.
So it was only public and private indebtedness that really grew. In favor of social peace or benefits of one part or of these and that together. Without any significant macroeconomic difference between governments of different political colors and not even with military dictatorships, which – on the contrary – have done worse than all the others also in this respect. The numbers bear witness to this, despite the attempts at make-up . Until today, when it hits the front page (and at the Monetary Fund someone pretends to look surprised…) that the Leliq debt must be added to the well-known debt, anything but occult, although its mechanisms are semi-unknown to many politicians as well as the common citizen. They are pesos for the equivalent of another 40 billion dollars approximately: Letters of Credit issued not by the Treasury, but by the central bank and kept locked in a safe by the banking circuit in exchange for a non-negligible interest rate. This is why Milei no longer talks aboutdollarisation, nor about the war on the "political caste"; but of stagflacion , stagnation+inflation on the way. And he responds to governors who ask for funds to pay their thirteenths to make do, the coffers are empty.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/javier-milei-argentina-prime-decisioni/ on Sat, 02 Dec 2023 06:40:00 +0000.