Today is ‘el Día de los Inocentes’ (the local equivalent of April Fool’s Day) so readers will have no way of knowing whether the Javier Milei administration is really capable of all the stuff to follow or whether they are just having their leg pulled. Actually, it was not as dramatic a year as Milei’s disruptive entry into the Presidency just before its start might have led us to expect but this eighth edition of our annual review, compiled entirely from material from this newspaper, carries plenty of news and comment. So without any further ado, here goes, week by week:
JANUARY
WEEK 1. No immediate sign of a new year as the prices freed on the arrival of Javier Milei’s libertarian government continue to soar with a litre of petrol hitting four digits while government priorities remain centred on its monster 664-article omnibus bill (accompanied by a 183-page deregulatory mega-decree) – a multiplicity of objectives which only seems to multiply the obstacles. This runs into its first resistance as the National Labour Appeals Court interrupts the judicial holiday month to issue injunctions blocking the labour reforms. Nobody could either totally agree or disagree with the mega-decree but Milei seems to prefer the logic of the Gordian knot to Occam’s razor – the “por sí o por no” of his presidential debate rival Sergio Massa. Newly ex-president Alberto Fernández makes an extremely early start to a year in the doghouse when his lavish “12 grapes” New Year dinner in Madrid costing 1,000 euros per head is splashed all over the media here. President Javier Milei starts the year with a major overhaul of Armed Forces top brass (the biggest in four decades) bearing the mark of Defence Minister Luis Petri prompted by Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Karina Milei more than of Vice-President Victoria Villarruel – Air Force Brigadier-General (Air Marshal) Xavier Isaac replaces Army Lieutenant-General Juan Martín Paleo as head of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. In other news, Mapuche militant leader Facundo Jones Huala is extradited to Chile while long-time Argentinisches Tageblatt editor (and Treasury secretary during the 1976-83 military junta) Juan Alemann dies three days into the New Year at the age of 96. Reyes (Epiphany) at the end of the week finds the three kings offering Argentina the “bitter perfume” of myrrh and also frankincense with Milei’s popularity ratings as high as 60-plus percent but little gold.
W2. The INDEC national statistics bureau posts a staggering 25.5 percent inflation for the previous month to take the 2023 calendar figure up to 211.4 percent, the highest in the world, but momentum is already slowing with many businesses starting to price themselves out of a depressed market after a month of furious hikes since the money to pay them is no longer being printed (“no hay plata” with beef already dropping from 8,000 to 5,000 pesos per kilo). Milei’s shock policies and mega-devaluation clearly account for the horrendous December figure but it is impossible to argue that the Frente de Todos administration governing during 49 of that year’s 52 weeks had zero responsibility for its inflation. The government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reach agreement on a remittance of US$4.7 billion in return for a primary fiscal surplus of two percent and a US$10-billion increment to Central Bank reserves. The omnibus reform bill has a bumpy ride through committee stage in Congress with Bullrich already dropping an absurd article obliging all public meetings of over three people to seek permission from her Ministry. Milei finally moves into Olivos presidential residence to set up shop there at a time when there is implied speculation in the international press that the eccentric mop-head might not go the distance and be replaced by Villarruel, perceived as a pro-military hardliner. The prime summer holiday month finds well over half the population staying home (including 46 percent even among a shattered middle class) amid fears that the percentage below the poverty line might reach the 56 percent of Milei’s run-off victory. Completing a U-turn, Milei invites the erstwhile “Communist” Pope Francis to visit his homeland. In London the Teatro Colón’s musical director, the renowned British conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, is arrested at Victoria Station in midweek on child sex abuse charges, which (not surprisingly) leads to his dismissal two days later.
W3. Milei does Davos in the centenary of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. His fervent defence of capitalism (even defending monopolies) might seem like preaching to the converted, given his fabulously wealthy audience at the World Economic Forum, and thus wasted but in reality he was addressing domestic galleries, as Argentine presidents almost always do when speaking abroad, with most of the 20-minute speech cut and pasted from last year’s campaign rhetoric. Milei’s “future shock” address centres unduly on the 19th century when Argentina was “the richest country in the world,” overlooking that most of its progress came from decades when the state walked tall with such initiatives as public education, military conscription and infrastructure in general – a more accurate history lesson might have gone down better with a hard-headed business world of mixed economies (not to mention China). “More holes than a Swiss cheese?” is the title of the Times editorial. At Davos Milei sits down with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and the IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva. Back home, the omnibus reform law package remains stuck in Congress; La Rioja embarks on the quasi-currency road with its legislature approving the issue of Bocade bonds to the tune of 22.5 billion pesos for general use and to pay provincial employees 30 percent of their salaries; a turf war between Paraguayan and Bolivian squatters in La Matanza leading to five people being shot dead leads a xenophobic Bullrich to call for the expulsion of all foreign criminals. The first Covid-19 death of the year in Salta.
W4. Just six weeks into the Milei administration, the CGT trade union umbrella holds a general strike in midweek which could be termed a success or a failure – the streets are pretty dead beyond the mass protest rally outside Congress, as they normally are in this holiday month and even more so with that week’s scorching temperatures, but most shops remain open – but is basically an irrelevant blip. Teamster leader Pablo Moyano recommends chucking Economy Minister Luis Caputo into the fetid Riachuelo. At this stage the CGT represent only half the workforce with nothing to offer those working informally or the self-employed but the government also needs to ask itself how long its liquid power in the social platforms can co-exist with an increasingly liquid peso. The “all or nothing” (Bullrich dixit) omnibus reform package remains on the blink in Congress with the provinces potentially paying the price of failure. Trimming the bill from 664 to 523 articles secures a majority opinion in plenary committee sessions but only 21 of the 55 deputies voting in favour approve without any dissent – some of the objections are “caste” self-interest but others are a legitimate concern for checks and balances. In midweek the government sends a bill to Congress to lower the income tax floor drastically to add some 800,000 tax-payers – a move generally favoured by provincial governors since the levy is subject to federal revenue-sharing. Milei’s original Cabinet lasts little more than six weeks with not only Infrastructure Minister Guillermo Ferraro fired but his ministry dissolved, blending into the Economy Ministry – supposedly for Cabinet meeting leaks and reportedly for running afoul of Cabinet Chief Nicolás Posse but the blanket freeze on public works gives little point to his portfolio. Reducing interest rates to single digits amid two months of 20-plus percent inflation helps to melt the Leliq bond snowball but totally discourages savers. Crime returns to the spotlight when the nine-year-old daughter of one of Bullrich’s bodyguards is killed in a bid to steal the family car. All official documents are obliged by decree to term 2024 “the year of the defence of life, liberty and property.” The New Hampshire primaries kick off election year in the United States.
W5. The omnibus bill (minus 258 of the original 664 articles, including its core fiscal chapter, but still serving up enough executive branch superpowers to keep Argentina an ultra-presidential democracy) finally reaches the House floor on the last day of the month with thousands demonstrating outside Congress and clashing with police. The IMF retains its 2.8 percent forecast for Argentine growth this year with the significant difference that it is now minus 2.8 percent. The 2015 Peronist presidential candidate and former two-term Buenos Aires Province governor Daniel Scioli moves out of the Brasilia Embassy to become Tourism, Environment and Sports secretary, thus merging two Frente de Todos ministries into one department. Milei meets with BlackRock investment fund CEO Larry Fink and Tinder founder Sean Rad. The country continues to swelter in searing summer temperatures. The newspaper Ámbito Financiero (founded in late 1976) ends a print run of almost half a century, going digital.
FEBRUARY
W6. A kippah-capped President prioritises an emotional trip to Israel – visiting a kibbutz hard-hit by Hamas four months previously, reading Exodus extracts in Hebrew and pledging to move the Argentine Embassy to Jerusalem – while back home his omnibus bill hits a major bump in the road. Despite the success of securing first reading in Congress with a 144-109 vote (F2), clause-by-clause second reading four days later sees half of the first half dozen articles rejected, leading the government to return the bill to committee stage with the attitude of the small boy who picks up his marbles and goes home – Milei loses all appetite for further concessions to fickle provincial governors (“traitors”) in a bill already shorn of its fiscal chapter and with fierce resistance to privatisations, weighing his options between rule by decree and a plebiscite although his deregulatory mega-decree 70/2023 (yet to be vetted by Congress) remains intact. But the opposition can also be faulted for the poor level of debate and the failure to produce any constructive alternatives. All state media are placed under government trusteeship with a view to privatisation. Libertarian deputies present two bills to repeal the abortion law without visible government support. The trial of former Tucumán governor and ex-senator José Alperovich for the sexual abuse of his niece begins. Petrol price increases under the libertarian administration total 75 percent by the start of the month with bus and train fares upped even more by over 80 percent. A torrential downpour (F8) causes traffic chaos by flooding streets and interrupting all subway lines. Across the Andes former Chilean two-term centre-right president Sebastián Piñera, 74, dies when he crashes his helicopter into a Patagonian lake (F6), saving his passengers but not himself.
W7. The year’s first month sees monthly inflation down five percentage points to 20.6 percent (announced on Saint Valentine’s Day) but the annual rate is still an impossible 254 percent as December’s maxi-devaluation and the liberation of prices continue to kick in. The economic team nevertheless trusts in a savage recession slowing down inflation sooner rather than later with real wages and pensions torn to shreds (although not the government’s popularity ratings) and soup kitchens in crisis. The crawling peg monthly devaluation of two percent stubbornly maintained from the previous administration is totally out of any balance with these rates of inflation, which nevertheless contribute towards zero fiscal deficit by swelling revenues while shrinking costs. Subway tokens and highway tolls join bus and train fares in shooting up. The President starts the week in Rome, combining attendance of the canonisation of Mama Antula (Argentina’s first saint) at the Vatican with meetings with Pope Francis and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni – the former amicable enough (with Milei doing most of the talking) and the latter decidedly warmer. Later in the week Milei announces educational vouchers to assist the payment of private school fees and the purchase of scholastic equipment as his gesture towards the vulnerable, giving his conversation with the Pope some of the credit. But prior to flying out to Rome, he is in less magnanimous mood, dumping ANSES social security administration chief Osvaldo Giordano and Mining Secretary Flavia Royón (respectively linked to the governors of Córdoba and Salta) in a burst of spite in apparent payback of the perceived failure of those governors to back his omnibus bill while most provinces suffer from provincial transport subsidies being axed. Milei declares his assets at 54.7 million pesos (more than doubling 2023) while ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner declares hers at almost a quarter billion, including shares in Mercado Libre, Apple, Coca Cola and Berkshire Hathaway. After being grounded at Ezeiza International Airport for 20 months, the Venezuelan-Iranian plane detained in mid-2022 finally departs heading stateside as federal judge Federico Villena at last accedes to Washington’s request for its decommissioning. Two Argentine hostages are rescued from the hands of Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
W8. A wave of strikes spearheaded by train-drivers as trade unions push back against Decree 170/2024 freeing workers from the yoke of the union-run obras sociales healthcare schemes even though the government ups the minimum wage from 156,000 to 202,800 pesos as from March. Pensions are upped 27.18 percent for the second quarter (half or less of the inflation expected for the first because the previous Frente de Todos government’s system based on wishful thinking rather than index-linking is still in force), taking the minimum pension up to almost 135,000 pesos plus a 70,000-peso bonus. The UCA Catholic University is already calculating four people out of every seven as below the poverty line with 15 percent destitute (staggering when most of the budget and over a quarter of gross domestic product is earmarked for social spending – perhaps not as dire a poverty as the slums and conventillos of the previous century but also lacking its upward social mobility). British Foreign Secretary David Cameron (prime minister between 2010 and 2016) draws fire when he visits the Malvinas en route to the G20 summit of foreign ministers in Rio de Janeiro where he meets his Argentine counterpart Diana Mondino – the Tierra del Fuego provincial government declares Cameron persona non grata while Mondino is subtler, complimenting him on his interest in Argentine territory. Both the current and future US Secretaries of State – Antony Blinken, also making a detour from Rio, and Senator Marco Rubio (Republican-Florida) – come to town that week. The INADI anti-discrimination institute is absorbed into the Justice Ministry with an eye to dismantlement while defeated Peronist presidential candidate Massa finds new work with the Greylock Capital Management hedge fund. But for many people the big issue is none of the above but the hordes of mosquitoes plaguing the city after the abundant rainfall following a drought year.
W9. Among the year’s most static weeks, given the libertarian government’s proclivity to keep the news on the hop. Chubut PRO Governor Ignacio Torres makes the biggest noise by threatening to cut off oil and gas supplies from his province in reaction to having 13.8 billion pesos slashed off his federal revenue-sharing cut, receiving the support of almost all governors but push does not come to shove (although not an entirely empty threat since an alliance with the oil workers’ union was one key to Torres winning last year’s gubernatorial election) – Security Minister Bullrich (also PRO) accuses him of “blackmail” while rubbishing Chubut (“nobody lives there except a million guanacos”). Yet 13.8 billion already looks like small change when Milei knocks some 875 billion pesos off the Buenos Aires provincial budget by eliminating the FFF (Fondo de Fortalecimiento Fiscal) revenue booster created by his predecessor Alberto Fernández at the expense of City Hall’s federal revenue-sharing cut (not that they recover it). Talking of Alberto Fernández, he enters into permanent trouble throughout the year when he is indicted for steering the insurance contracts of government agencies in the direction of private brokers (including his secretary’s husband) with juicy commissions via Decree 83/2021 stipulating that all such insurance contracts should go to Nación Seguros SA. Milei goes to a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Washington while Caputo goes to the G20 summit of economy ministers in Sao Paulo to huddle with generally congratulatory colleagues although the IMF pressures him mildly to lift ‘cepo’ currency controls. Aerolíneas Argentinas trade unions stage strikes repeated throughout most of this year, grounding most airlines and affecting over 80,000 passengers. The Defence Ministry axes inclusive language, followed the next day by the entire civil service. Dengue, an inevitable consequence of the mosquitoes, is a cause for concern.
MARCH
W10. This month invariably begins with the presidential state-of-the-nation speech to open Congress for the year. A disruptive President Milei does not alter this tradition but opts for bizarre timing – 9pm on the eve of a weekend, almost as if he did not want anybody to listen. Despite heading an administration with more future than past (just 81 days in office), Milei gives no real road map for the year, apart from announcing the return of income tax and inviting provincial governors to sign a 10-point Pact of May (which looks more like Maybe) on the national day of May 25, but places his focus on the dire inheritance received from the Frente de Todos administration – the fiscal deficit, inflation topping 200 percent and mass poverty. The economic backdrop is grim with consumer markets and savings suffering alike (the former from a 20 percent fall in real wages and the latter from interest rates barely half inflation) while the fiscal surplus has been achieved at the expense of pensions, public works, seven-digit utility bills and transfers to provinces. Milei’s socio-economic pact is pitched to the governors rather than employers and workers, thus being the first to be federal rather than corporate. In the week which follows, ending in International Women’s Day (M8) with vociferous feminist marches, the government shutters Télam news agency (anticipated in the state-of-the-nation speech). Milei orders Economy Minister Caputo to audit all 29 government trust funds, which he insists are multi-billion political gravy trains – at a much lower level in every sense, his visit to his old school (Instituto Cardenal Copello) is marred by some off-colour jokes in front of schoolchildren. Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou’s accusations of Argentina and Brazil blocking a free trade agreement with China create tensions. The Expoagro farm show in the delta town of San Nicolás is a success with 600 exhibitors.
W11. Milei suffers the rejection of his deregulatory mega-decree in the Senate by a 42-25 vote, proceeding to streamline the accompanying omnibus bill gridlocked in Congress to 269 articles from the original 664 (excluding the privatisation of YPF among other items) and to submit it to the governors. But at least INDEC announces February inflation as slowing to 13.2 percent, little more than half his first term in office. Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni has to deny differences between the President and his veep Villarruel, in part due to the Senate frustration, but Milei is even angrier over a 48 percent increase in Executive Branch salaries which makes the government look hypocritical, pinning the blame on and firing Labour Secretary Omar Yasin after quashing the offending decree (which had also been signed by the President himself, as well as Caputo and Posse). Caputo scores a major success with a bond swap for over three-quarters of peso debt to the tune of US$50 billion. Despite the lower February figure, the minister makes two surprise moves in his war on inflation – downing interest rates to 80 percent (less than half annual inflation) and freeing imports to pressure prices downward. Over 50 universities close down on the Thursday (M14) to protest a lack of funding which they fear will run out in May. British Ambassador Kirsty Hayes is summoned to the Foreign Ministry for a 40-minute dressing-down in a bid to show the Milei government takes the Malvinas issue seriously. Four murders in Rosario trigger more concern than higher tolls in the past because they are all innocent citizens instead of gangsters slaughtering each other – Bullrich reacts by sending in military troops and federal security forces, changing her priorities from curbing pickets. The Security minister in particular and people in general start taking an interest in Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador systematically denying criminals the benefit of the doubt. Milei, who has defined the state as a “criminal organisation,” now mobilises it against criminal organisations. A wet week with violent thunderstorms, torrential downpours and flooded streets.
W12. Milei marks his first 100 days in office (M19) with his chainsaw austerity yet to overcome the crisis rather than compound it as a shrinking middle class in particular feel the pinch and the weather only adds to an atmosphere of gloom – even wetter and stormier than the previous week with the Casa Rosada itself flooded and the “cataratas de General Paz” (waterfalls where BA province meets the City) with dengue in the background. Nevertheless, a work in progress with his popularity continuing more or less intact despite the problems in making ends meet. The milestone is accompanied by making two nominations to replace vacancies in the Supreme Court – federal judge Ariel Lijo (with the image of being the shadiest member of what many would call a dirty dozen at the Comodoro Py courthouse) and the conservative constitutional law scholar Manuel García-Mansilla in a flagrant defiance of gender equality. At the start of the week Milei becomes the first Argentine president this century to mark the anniversary of the 1992 terrorist destruction of the Israeli Embassy, joined by an apparently reconciled veep Villarruel and several ministers – coherent with a foreign policy which seems to imagine that there are only two other countries in the world (the United States and Israel), not almost 200. Media articles attribute a high turnover in a volatile administration to a “Bermuda triangle” of presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei, Posse and spin doctor Santiago Caputo. The Human Capital Ministry submits evidence of insurance fraud to federal judge Julián Ercolini trying ex-president Fernández.
W13. Over 400,000 people, including human rights activists, opposition parties and social organisations but also simple citizens, turn out on Memory Day (M24 and also Palm Sunday) to march against what they perceive as government denialism of state terrorism during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship although the Milei administration prefers to see it as a “complete memory” also including guerrilla crimes while challenging the traditional figure of 30,000 for the missing. Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo president Estela Barnes de Carlotto enjoins Milei to “change or leave.” Just two days later one of the worst crimes of the dictatorship – “La Noche de los Lápices” (“night of the pencils”) when 10 La Plata schoolchildren were abducted for demanding low-price student bus fares with only four surviving – finally receives justice with 10 life sentences. But the week’s news with the biggest concrete impact is emergency decree 274/2024 changing the pension system with retirement benefits to be updated on a monthly, not quarterly basis and also index-linked according to the inflation of the penultimate month (for which there was no provision in the previous system) plus an extraordinary increase of 12.5 percent in partial compensation for January inflation – all this as from the second quarter after pensions lost a third of their value in the first. Numerous criticisms of Lijo’s Supreme Court nomination are voiced, including even AmCham, which states: “It is imperative that the new members of the Supreme Court be officials of integrity and honesty.” But Lijo fancies his chances of the requisite two-thirds Senate majority on the basis of his flexibility offering both Milei a green light for his deregulatory reforms and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (controlling almost half the senators) impunity for the many charges against her – an ethically dubious pact apparently acceptable to the government but perhaps not for AmCham or overseas investors while Kirchnerism might consider austerity and privatisation too high a price to pay even for impunity. Colombia takes umbrage at Milei’s “denigrating” definition of their president Gustavo Petro as a “terrorist” and “murderer.” The renaming of the Centro Cultural Kirchner is announced, Luis Lucero replaces Royón as Mining secretary following a six-week vacuum, Petri signs a US$300-million deal with Denmark for F-16 fighter jets and US Ambassador Marc Stanley calls for a closer look at the Chinese space station in Neuquén.
APRIL
W14. The six days between Maundy Thursday and Veterans’ Day (A2) marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1982 South Atlantic war are one extra-long weekend with some 3.2 million Easter tourists on the move (even if “no hay plata” or the cupboard is bare and even if dollar purchasing power is almost as devalued as the peso) while not much happens in the rest of the week. In his nationwide broadcast to mark the 1982 war anniversary, Milei gives second place to Malvinas sovereignty claims, making his central theme “a new era of reconciliation” with the Armed Forces to end their “humiliation.” This is accompanied by a “clear road map for returning the Malvinas to Argentina” without any clarity at all other than underlining the country’s need to regain international respect while describing 19th-century president Julio Argentino Roca as his “main inspiration” for sovereignty claims. The IMF hails the “impressive progress” made by Milei since taking office (although more impressed by the fact of a fiscal surplus than by its quality) but double-digit inflation has been one key towards clinching a fiscal surplus by boosting revenues while evaporating spending so that bringing down inflation could be the victim of its own success – missing out on infrastructure by equating public works with Kirchnerite corruption is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Former Domestic Trade secretary Guillermo Moreno goes on trial for doctoring INDEC’s inflation data during Kirchner presidencies.
W15. Milei spends much of the week stateside, receiving an “International Ambassador of Light” award from an orthodox Jewish community in Miami and hobnobbing with SpaceX and Tesla tycoon Elon Musk. In a television interview Milei eagerly anticipates the imminent bankruptcy of the Perfil publishing house owning this newspaper (yet to happen) amid a general tantrum against “corrupt” journalists. With its “nothing succeeds like success” months still lying in the future, his administration seems to be opting for “nothing exceeds like excess” because the Defence Ministry dismantles its unit investigating crimes against humanity in the 1976-1983 dictatorship while La Libertad Avanza deputy Alberto ‘Bertie’ Benegas Lynch urges the end of compulsory education as contradictory with liberty and a state invasion of family life – children are often more useful in the workshop than in the classroom, he argues, in a vindication of child labour. Yet one of the pillars of Argentina’s golden years over a century ago so often extolled by Milei was precisely Ley 1420 of 1884 instituting free compulsory education. Even Human Capital Minister Sandra Pettovello distances herself from this extremist outburst. More serious educational reforms (not least the overpopulated universities) are needed instead. Not much happens with the lion away. The omnibus bill remains stuck in Congress where the La Libertad Avanza caucus removes Oscar Zago as its chief, the government seeks to recruit provincial support for the bill while cementing the fiscal surplus by confirming the return of income tax to normal levels from Massa’s electioneering cuts the previous year and a Thursday bus strike paralyses the city. Ex-president Fernández has a general lien slapped on his assets in the state insurance fraud against him. Imports obliged to pass through the Customs “red channel” are reduced by a third with textiles, footwear and domestic appliances the main beneficiaries.
W16. The government makes its biggest departure from free market principles until then (and perhaps of the year) when it replaces deregulation with orders to the main prepaid medicine schemes to roll back their fees to the start of the year and then update them strictly according to the subsequent inflation with anything over returned to their clients, thus depriving the schemes of the opportunity to recoup previous losses from Kirchnerite freezes. A simplistic solution because monthly inflation figures are an average of increases with often fivefold differences between items. Instead of showing a bit more patience in allowing the prepaid to price themselves out of the market and adjust accordingly, a libertarian administration has a panic attack with the adverse middle-class reactions to soaring fees averaging 150-percent increases, thus showing a loss of faith in the self-correcting mechanisms of supply and demand – a subordination of economic dogma to political tactics. Milei adds insult to injury by calling Claudio Belocopitt, the sectorial chamber’s resigning head, a “sorete” (“piece of shit”) yet the growing exodus of doctors and the 2,000 percent increase in medicine prices over the previous decade had left the schemes little choice but to up their fees. The Supreme Court nominations of Lijo and García-Mansilla are formalised without the criticism abating. The Iranian drone attack on Israel prompts Milei to cut short his US sojourn before the weekend is out and he is sued the next day by prestigious journalist Jorge Lanata for being called a liar for criticising the presence of the Israeli ambassador at a Cabinet meeting where the envoy appears in the official photographs. The Senate votes itself a pay hike from 1.7 to four million pesos, thus stirring controversy. A delegation of government officials and scientific experts inspect the controversial Chinese space observation base in Neuquén, three weeks after US Ambassador Stanley sounds the alarm.
W17. Around half a million people (the official count is 150,000) march on Tuesday (A23) to protest the cuts in university spending in the most massive and spontaneous pushback against austerity until then (and perhaps of the year). President Milei dismisses the demonstration as “riding a noble cause to defend caste interests” – nor is he entirely wrong since some university spending would not survive the audit their chancellors resist. Yet the government misses the point in treating this issue as purely fiscal – slashing across the board instead of questioning the multiplicity of universities with the option of closing down some entirely while maintaining the funding of others. Nor do they challenge the free and unrestricted admission which has led to the dysfunctional total of 320,000 students at Buenos Aires University (UBA) with less than a third graduating, thus fostering middle-class mediocrity with less interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) because even without fees, life in the big city has expenses which the lower classes cannot meet (three times as many students come from the top fifth of incomes as from the bottom, thus making trade union support for the demonstration harder to understand since university spending would seem a matter of the poor paying for the rich). In response, university authorities cling to the convincing mantra that education is the key to the 21st century, which covers a multitude of sins. But both sides prefer polarisation to a debate where both have arguments. The march is preceded by a prime-time evening nationwide broadcast in which Milei celebrates the first fiscal surplus since 2008 and the end of state presence while the mass demonstration leads to a defiant Milei assuring the next day that his reforms would go through with or without parliamentary legislation. Presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei is promoted to ministerial rank. INCAA film institute is shuttered with a view to relocating its staff. The 48th Book Fair opens with a strongly anti-government tone in (A25). Right at the end of the month the omnibus reform package is finally steered through the lower house with a 125-106 vote in the second reading to await approval in a hostile Senate with court rulings as a further sword of Damocles. Shorn of 430 clauses, the bill is mocked as a taxi or even bicycle but there are enough emergency powers in the very first of the surviving 232 clauses to fuel the presidential chainsaw (even if such intensified state control would seem to contradict the libertarian lion’s anarcho-capitalist philosophy) while Milei vows to implement all the rest following victory in next year’s midterms. The RIGI major investment incentive scheme is another important survival. Various caste blemishes such as most state companies (although Aerolíneas remains on the privatisation list), the Tierra del Fuego tax breaks and preferential tobacco excise survive. The 30-hour debate (averaging less than eight minutes per clause and hopelessly oversimplifying complex issues) sees such anomalies as the far left voting against progressive income tax, surely a worldwide first. During the debate the Coalición Cívica drops out of Miguel Pichetto’s Federal debate. The weekend before the Congress vote, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner blasts Milei at a Quilmes rally where she proposes that almost all taxes should be submitted to federal revenue-sharing with the provinces, something she never herself contemplated when president. Last but not least, the tireless human rights lawyer Horacio Méndez Carreras dies just days before his 87th birthday (A29).
MAY
W18. May Day at the start of the month is marked by thousands of workers demonstrating in the streets but not especially different from other years. On the same day Milei cancels the Book Fair launch of his latest economic text to later in the month at Luna Park on the pretext of fears of “Kirchnerite sabotage … with great hostility to my person.” The government closes down the offices of all provincial correspondents of Télam state news agency (described by Milei as an “agency of Kirchnerite propaganda” in his state-of-the-nation speech to open Congress). The dengue epidemic lingers.
W19. The omnibus bill enters Senate committee stage with RIGI especially under fire against a backdrop of social unrest, highlighted by the second CGT general strike against the Milei presidency in less than half a year (M9). But Milei spends much of the week far distant from either Congress or city streets, addressing the global conference of the Milken Institute (named after the Wall Street junk bond speculator Michael “greed is good” Milken) in Los Angeles where he presents Argentina as the “Mecca of the West” (without explaining how he proposes to exit capital controls) – even in such an ultra-capitalist forum as the Milken Institute his anarcho-capitalism seems eccentric since historically capitalism never took wing until a rules-based society replaced feudal chaos and royal absolutism. In an interview with the BBC Milei recognises the reality of British possession of the Malvinas, describing British 1982 South Atlantic war leader Margaret Thatcher as “brilliant.” Mondino is also abroad in Europe following a generally successful visit to China (mending fences and working to clinch the currency swap), marred only by saying in France that “all Chinese look the same” in reference to her finding it impossible to distinguish between civilian and military personnel at Beijing’s Neuquén space base. Argentine banks accuse Mercado Libre of market abuse via its digital wallet Mercado Pago within a tricky financial context where interest rates run behind inflation and the dollar behind both with the crawling peg devaluation of a monthly two percent. The 10,000-peso banknote begins to circulate but the 20,000-peso banknote is held back until the end of the year. At the start of the week two lesbian couples perish in a Barracas boarding-house from the Molotov cocktail arson attack of a fellow-tenant in an especially nasty hate crime. César Luis Menotti, the football coach who led Argentina to its first World Cup back in 1978, dies of stomach cancer at the age of 85 (M5). An appeals court overturns the suspended prison sentence of Buenos Aires provincial policeman Luis Chocobar for the 2017 slaying of a fleeing thief who had stabbed a US tourist – Security Minister Bullrich warmly approves.
W20. Monthly inflation finally returns to single digits when INDEC posts 8.8 percent for April after 11 percent in March – a more honest figure than the 8.3 percent of the previous October since it is achieved without price controls or frozen utility billing. Nevertheless, a few goal-posts were moved to achieve this result with single-digit inflation becoming single-issue politics – the updating of winter gas bills and fuel prices is deferred, prepaid fees rolled back and devaluation pegged at two percent. A core inflation (leaving aside regulated and seasonal prices) of 6.3 percent promises further deceleration but annual inflation is still running at 289.4 percent. Praising this progress, the IMF duly approves the eighth review of its US$44-billion stand-by programme with Argentina. A report on bogus soup kitchens (covering 2,800 of a total 38,000 soup kitchens with almost half not found to be in existence but this would not be surprising with the denial of funds), with raids on picket organisations exposing the misallocation of US$76,000 and over eight million pesos, sees the government presenting social welfare benefits as being as synonymous with corruption as public works, two examples of throwing out the baby with the bathwater by leaving mass poverty to snowball and delaying vital infrastructure. After almost half a year Cabinet Chief Posse finally condescends to report to Congress in an eight-hour Senate session, calling welfare plans “modern slavery” – the costs of presidential travels are a leading curiosity. A tearful President Milei unveils the bust of late 1989-1999 president Carlos Menem on the anniversary of his election victories in 1989 and 1995 (M14), lionising him as “the best President of the last 40 years at least.” Ex-president Mauricio Macri returns to the chairmanship of the PRO centre-right party which he founded. The government trebles funding for UBA’s university hospitals and running expenses but the issues of academic salaries and research financing remain unsolved. The 48th Book Fair closes (M13) with attendance almost 10 percent down from last year.
W21. No Pacto de Mayo on the nationhood day at the end of this week, as so grandiosely announced by President Milei in his state-of-the-nation speech 11 weeks previously since the required consensus of all provincial governors is lacking – just a low-key solo speech in a one-man pact. But in any case Milei’s mind is elsewhere, embroiled in a spat with Spanish socialist premier Pedro Sánchez by calling his wife an “a corrupt influence-trafficker” at a partisan rally of the far-right Vox in Madrid – welcoming this distraction from his precarious majority and seeking to polarise against the extremist Vox instead of the mainstream centre-right, Sánchez withdraws his ambassador here, María José Alonso. This gratuitous confrontation with the Madrid government conspires against any success in coaxing investments from his huddle with leading Spanish businessmen because even if hardly any of these would vote for Sánchez, Spain (Argentina’s second-highest foreign investor) is a mixed economy like most countries in the world – this newspaper’s editorial that week is entitled “The pain in Spain falls mainly on the gain.” Back in Argentina Milei makes his postponed book launch in Luna Park where he is successively a rock star singer and a boring economics lecturer. INDEC reports a sharp year-on-year economic contraction of 8.4 percent for March – economic growth is on a collision course with fiscal policy which takes priority, fighting inflation with deflation, a mega-appreciated peso and negative interest rates to set the quasi-fiscal deficit on a downward rather than upward path but also discouraging saving. La Matanza Peronist Mayor Fernando Espinoza is indicted for sexual abuse. The Misiones provincial police mutiny. Karina Milei opens her own X account with 43,000 followers on the first day.
W22. The week starts with the resignation of Cabinet Chief Posse (his closest friend over the last 18 years, says Milei – too much of his government seems to be a club of friends until they cease to be friends) due to “differences in criteria and expectations regarding the progress of the government,” according to the Presidency statement – he is replaced by Interior Minister Guillermo Francos (74), who brings his ministry with him into his new job. The reticent Posse is also thought to have accumulated enemies by using his control of the AFI intelligence agency under Silvestre Sívori to snoop and sure enough, Sívori is also shown the exit door. Francos quickly earns brownie points by helping to steer the omnibus bill through committee stage in the Senate. The day after ditching Posse, Milei makes a flying visit to California to wow hi tech tycoons, talking artificial intelligence, but on the same day on the other coast of the superpower, Manhattan judge Loretta Preska rules both YPF and the Central Bank alter egos of the Argentine state, thus making YPF shares and the Chinese currency swap among other assets fair game for the hedge fund creditors successfully suing Argentina for US$16 billion. Five million kilos of food held back by the Human Capital Ministry becomes a national scandal, drawing comment from a wide range of critics extending from social activist Juan Grabois to television hostess Mirtha Legrand (97), who calls it “criminal.” Mothers of Plaza de Mayo-Línea Fundadora leader Nora Cortiñas dies at the age of 94 (M30). The Misiones provincial police mutiny continues with shots fired in the air in the provincial capital of Posadas along with less violent protests by teachers and doctors but towards the end of the week a pay deal is reached. Pope Francis shakes up the local hierarchy by demanding the resignation of La Plata Archbishop Gabriel Mestre after only 16 months. In the United States ex-president Donald Trump is found guilty on all counts in the hush-money trial involving porn star Stormy Daniels while in London Latham-Koenig receives a suspended sentence of 14 months for his paedophilia.
JUNE
W23. The scandal of the withheld soup kitchen food supplies remains in the centre of the news and keeping the government on the hop with a lively slanging-match between Grabois and Human Capital Ministry official Leila Gianni outside the courtroom. President Milei threatens to veto a Congress bill to improve pensions almost as soon as it wins lower house approval with a 162-72 vote – the bill basically ups the compensation for January inflation in the new updating system from the 12.5 percent granted by the government to the actual INDEC figure of 20.6 percent. Fair enough but the insolvency of the pension system calls for serious reform, including raising the retirement age with global demographic trends – issues yet to be tackled by either the government or the opposition. Nor can soup kitchens be the answer to poverty – either a massive inflow of investment creating real jobs (two things which do not always go together) with major improvements in productivity or an acceleration into a future of artificial intelligence with a universal basic income. Both the appointment of Francos as Cabinet Chief and the elimination of the Interior Ministry he has just vacated are formalised while Science & Technology Secretary Alejandro Cosentino (another Posse placement) resigns to protest the division of his portfolio. Presidential popularity continues to hover around the 56 percent of Milei’s runoff victory the previous November. In Mexico the ruling party’s Claudio Sheinbaum, the country’s first woman and first Jewish president, wins the elections with some 60 percent of the vote, bolstering the regional left, and ex-president Fernández immediately heads north to give her a hug. Veteran British community stalwart Tommy Hudson OBE (1932-2024) dies (J4).
W24. The first real turning-point in the year as the Senate passes the omnibus bill (even if with more amendments while the tie-breaking vote of veep Villarruel is needed after a 36-36 vote with perfect attendance) while May inflation is halved to 4.2 percent from April’s 8.8 percent, the lowest figure since the first month of 2022 – more good news from abroad as the IMF approves its final review of the stand-by programme while China agrees to renegotiate the US$5-billion currency swap instead of calling it in. For once Milei delays a trip abroad (to the G7 summit in Bari, Italy) to stay in touch with the vote where the government nets the entire non-Kirchnerite field except for two Santa Cruz senators and Radical party chairman Martín Lousteau – the tie-breaking vice-presidential vote is the first since the famous “not positive” of current Radical deputy Julio Cobos against the sliding scale for export duties in 2008. An almost miraculous result for a party with less than a tenth of the upper house but the groundswell of public opinion in favour of change gives the wafer-thin vote a certain legitimacy. The key clauses of emergency superpowers and a restricted RIGI both survive but the privatisation of Aerolíneas has to be dropped along with most others while the Kirchnerite pension moratoria stay put – the normalisation of income tax is rejected by a 31-21 vote while Tierra del Fuego retains its tax breaks by a stunning 65-6 vote. Obliging the termination of all public works 80 percent complete can be seen as a positive amendment. Protests outside Congress are more violent than previously with Molotov cocktails and stone-throwing from a lunatic fringe (denounced as a coup attempt), perhaps the consequence of a massive overkill police deployment. Inside Congress Milei perhaps gains more from snatching victory from the jaws of defeat than from a comfortable triumph since it gives him a platform to fulminate against an obstructionist “caste,” even using Lousteau to include the UCR even if a third of the votes in favour came from a dozen Radical senators. In summary, a major victory but the deep tax, labour, pension and other structural reforms still lie ahead. Mondino begins a downward slide – taken off the presidential flight to Italy, she also loses her portfolio’s Foundation for the Promotion of Investment and International Trade to presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei. The probe into the Human Capital Ministry’s irregular food deliveries becomes official. Like Milei, Buenos Aires Province Peronist Governor Axel Kicillof flies to Italy but to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican. The British Hospital celebrates its 180th anniversary.
W25. Alperovich is sentenced to 16 years for the rape and sexual abuse of his niece and former secretary together with lifelong disqualification from public office. Milei spends yet another week abroad between the G7 summit in Italy (where he joshes with host premier Meloni and hugs Pope Francis), the international Ukraine peace summit in Geneva and being decorated in Madrid by the Spanish capital’s conservative mayor – interrupted only by a brief return home to honour Flag Day in Rosario. Armed with his newly sanctioned emergency powers, Milei is already looking forward to the second half of the year with an “avalanche of investments,” almost identical to the “downpour of investments” promised eight years previously by Macri (a surname of equal length beginning and ending with the same letters). While praising one month of fiscal surplus after another, the IMF takes a less rosy view of the rest of the year, deepening its forecast of a 2024 slump from 2.8 to 3.5 percent while also requiring more urgency in ending the ‘cepo’ capital controls, export duties and negative interest rates among other things. Yet lower inflation, a more generous pension updating and the public sector no longer crowding the private out of credit markets make hopes of a consumer upturn not entirely unfounded. The emergence of Argentine-born Chilean economist José Luis Daza to replace Economic Policy Secretary Joaquín Cottani raises the prospect of taking a leaf out of the Andean neighbour’s book (over three decades of export-led growth beginning in 1982 when Chile was jerked into globalisation by monetarist policies so extreme that the economy shrank by 14 percent with unemployment soaring to 22 percent while eliminating all the uncompetitive deadwood and raising productivity to international levels). But too much of the government seems to believe that successful governance is all about having the right ideas rather than skills. Bullrich flies to Salvador for a “BuBu” meeting with Bukele for first-hand acquaintance with the Central American country’s drastic solutions to crime problems – in the same week the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Austrian Volker Türk, questions Bullrich’s anti-picket protocols along with the Milei government’s closure of departments dedicated to women’s rights. Adorni proclaims himself the new boss of state media. The Federal Cassation Court comes up with a controversial decision ruling that the money paid by businessman Angelo Calcaterra (a Macri cousin) into the Federal Planning Ministry of previous Kirchnerite administrations was nothing more than neutral electoral contributions and not bribery to steer public works his way, as decided in this and a dozen such other cases by a lower instance – in some ways positive as countering the Kirchnerite logic that only those paying the bribes are the criminals, not those receiving them, but still a mockery of the truth. None of the above draws the same media splash as the whereabouts of Loan Peña, a four-year-old Corrientes kid missing since J13.
W26. The whereabouts of Loan only mushroom as a leading news issue, receiving a blanket media coverage eclipsing counterparts in other countries like (say) Madeleine MaCann in Britain – the tip of an iceberg of at least 112 similar cases triggering a social guilt as a national debt (residual memories of baby-snatching during the 1976-1983 dictatorship?) and beyond them around 70 percent of the country’s undereducated children living below the poverty line. By comparison the Casa Rosada’s blacklisting of journalist Silvia Mercado for her interest in the presidential mastiffs or the scandal surrounding the multiple sexual harassment charges against veteran international journalist Pedro Brieger seem almost trivial. Milei spends a long weekend abroad in Madrid, Hamburg and Prague picking up sundry decorations (also nominating himself for the Nobel Prize for Economics) before returning home to oversee Congress approval of his ‘Ley de Bases’ omnibus bill, which it duly receives with a 147-107 vote (J28). INDEC posts 7.7 percent unemployment for the first quarter of the year, a single-digit percentage which looks out of sync with the scale of austerity and recession with double-digit slumps in construction and manufacturing industry, not to mention the worldwide threat to jobs posed by artificial intelligence – low productivity continues to multiply jobs while depressing wages (with sevenfold the people below the poverty line as jobless and youth unemployment trebling the general average). Labour reform and an economic boom leaving labour-intensive sectors behind might well increase unemployment. The pricing of Internet, mobile telephones and cable television is deregulated. The trial of the so-called “candy floss” gang for the attempted magnicide of then Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in September, 2022 begins in midweek.
JULY
W27. Not much big news in the first days of this month with the focus very much on the belated Independence Day signature of the ‘Pacto de Mayo.’ Federico Sturzenegger makes his long-awaited entry into the Cabinet to head the brand-new Deregulation & State Transformation Ministry (a portfolio with built-in obsolescence should it succeed); the conversion of Télam state news agency into an “advertising and propaganda agency” (their words, not ours) is announced; Demian Reidel (Milei’s co-nominee for the Nobel Prize of Economics when in Prague along with himself) is confirmed as chief presidential advisor; the chacho quasi-currency starts circulating in La Rioja; Bullrich supporters storm out of a PRO party convention; the trial of La Matanza Mayor Espinoza for sexual abuse is confirmed while the whereabouts of Loan Peña continues to eclipse all the above in terms of media space allocated. La Libertad Avanza proposes lowering the voting age for next year’s midterms to 14 with a cynically populist eye to maximising their youth vote – appropriate enough with some of Milei’s outbursts resembling teenage tantrums. Approximating the voting age to the proposed age of criminal responsibility of 13 is advanced as an argument while it is also true that teens tend to be more technically sophisticated than their elders (also making them more apolitical in the TikTok world). The US Embassy holds its biggest Independence Day party yet. Abroad Keir Starmer replaces Rishi Sunak as British prime minister after a Labour landslide winning almost two-thirds of the seats with little over a third of the vote while Bolivia is hit by an attempted coup (or is it a “self-coup” by President Luis Arce?).
W28. The first minutes of Independence Day see Milei belatedly sign his 10-point ‘Pacto de Mayo’ in Tucumán along with 17 of the 23 provincial governors (Buenos Aires, Formosa, La Pampa, La Rioja, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego are the absentees along with the Supreme Court) and both Macris (City Mayor Jorge and ex-president Mauricio) present among others – thus lining up with some of the most veteran members of the “caste” at odds with his outsider image. Later in the day the traditional Te Deum and a massive two-hour military parade with 7,000 soldiers and policemen on the march. In preparation for this “self-proclaimed” milestone Milei skips the Mercosur summit in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción (although not a CPAC event in Brazil the preceding weekend while finishing the week in Sun Valley, Idaho), using his excuse an interpretation of the Bolivian upheavals differing from all his Mercosur colleagues (as a “self-coup” as denounced by Bolivian leftist ex-president Evo Morales rather than a coup) and sending a critical Mondino instead. An absence which does not help to improve Argentina’s isolationist image in general nor the relationship with Brazil (Argentina’s leading trade partner and among the world’s top 10 economies) in particular – Milei could have been a voice favouring free trade against a Mercosur common external tariff way above the global average concocted by the São Paulo and Greater Buenos Aires industrial lobbies. The ‘Ley de Bases’ omnibus bill is promulgated on the eve of Independence Day. The government department in charge of farming changes both name and head with Fernando Villela (a Posse protégé) ejected in favour of his undersecretary Sergio Iraeta while reverting to its traditional label of Agriculture, Cattle-Breeding and Fisheries from Bioeconomy. Economist Fausto Spotorno resigns as an economic advisor, arguing that if the economic team is going to await ideal conditions before lifting the ‘cepo’ capital controls, it will end up waiting forever, as will investors. La Libertad Avanza deputies visit former military officers sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, including the notorious Alfredo Astiz and Adolfo Donda – Bullrich later defends the deputies, arguing that if human rights groupings can visit serial killers, “that’s what freedom is all about” while Milei sees no need for any reprimand or even comment. Two members of the French rugby team are arrested in Mendoza on charges of sexual assault. The coldest week of the year thus far.
W29. The solemn commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the 1994 terrorist car-bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre headed by President Milei (Argentina’s most pro-Israeli president ever) is the week’s central news item, accompanied by declaring Hamas a terrorist organisation. A debate over the trial in absentia of the Iranian suspects is revived to give this atrocity of a previous century continued visibility as it starts slipping out of living memory despite a casebook of almost half a million pages (less so the still mysterious death of special AMIA prosecutor Alberto Nisman in 2015). The week starts on a euphoric note after Argentina’s successful defence of the Copa América against Colombia thanks to a 112th minute winner by Lautaro Martínez in a final lasting almost four hours due to pre-match turbulence and a gratuitous half-time show. A less glorious sporting moment follows when Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernández posts a racist and homophobic video against Qatar World Cup final rivals France – Sports Undersecretary Julio Garro (previously a two-term mayor of the Buenos Aires provincial capital of La Plata) is ordered to resign after saying that national team captain Lionel Messi should apologise to France. The Economy Ministry announces completion of a full half year of fiscal surplus, as well as the demise of the quasi-fiscal deficit for good measure by pegging interest rates below instead of above inflation. Looking likely to lose the tender for the YPF-Petronas plant to liquefy natural gas to a Río Negro Province accepting RIGI, Buenos Aires Province Governor Kicillof announces a provincial RIGI bill while rejecting it on principle and at national level. Like the agricultural department a week previously, AFI intelligence reverts to its old designation under the acronym of SIDE and a new head (Sergio Neiffert with almost zero experience in public service but close to key spin doctor Santiago Cafiero) – it is now divided into four departments covering overseas threats, local organised crime, cybercrime and the overall coordination of these previous three areas. A fortnight after Spotorno, textile tycoon Teodoro 'Teddy' Karagozian is also bounced as an economic advisor for venturing the opinion in a television interview that the peso is overvalued. Adorni restricts access to his daily press conferences while the revival of compulsory matriculation for journalists is briefly floated. Loan Peña remains a dominant media presence for the fifth week running. The 136th Rural Society farm exhibition opens at the Palermo showgrounds. Abroad Milei’s Sun Valley jaunt is totally eclipsed by the attempt on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania.
W30. The Paris Olympics serve to distract most people for a fortnight as from J26. The government issues an emergency decree bumping up the budget of the revamped SIDE intelligence agency by over 120 billion pesos from reserve funds with limited accountability, all in a year of drastic austerity. The government creates LEFI bonds to transfer the Central Bank’s liabilities to the Treasury, thus completing elimination of the quasi-fiscal deficit, without much market reaction either way – there is more controversy over the Central Bank sending an undisclosed portion of its gold reserves to an unidentified European destination believed to be London. The government sets a minimum wage of 254,231 pesos, inching up to 271,571 pesos by October. Pope Francis moves the primacy of the Argentine Church from Buenos Aires to Santiago del Estero as the country’s first diocese back in 1570 (even if it was then designated the Bishopric of Tucumán). Mondino gives her take on the Malvinas to the Rotary Club: “We’re the owners and there are tenants though some call them squatters.” Garbage pile-ups in some City streets due to teamster strikes.
W31. Despite widespread hopes of a long overdue transition, Venezuela’s presidential elections (J28) sees Nicolás Maduro staying put, claiming victory by a vote of 51.2 percent with every indication of fraud. In hindsight it might seem foolish to expect anything else but there were grounds for optimism with the opposition neither banned nor boycotting the elections for the first time while, despite being leftist, the presidents of Venezuela’s two main neighbours (Brazil and Colombia) mark their distance, insisting on transparency. Even if Maduro were to accept defeat, there is still the kleptocratic military elite behind him with no clear exit strategy although consensus at home and abroad on the need to offer some impunity. But even if the Venezuelan economy has shrunk 80 percent under his watch with several million fleeing the country, Maduro remains adamant, reacting primitively like a cornered animal – not only does he lash back at the Milei government’s refusal to recognise his victory as “fraudulent” by forcing the Argentine Embassy to go under Brazil’s wing to avoid closure but he even declares Milei’s Peronist predecessor Alberto Fernández persona non grata when he tries to visit Venezuela for the elections. Committed to democracy but compromised by his BRICS membership with the interest of his Sino-Russian partners in a Venezuelan bridgehead to Latin America, Brazil’s Lula cannot take a clear stance, calling the travesty of an election “a normal process” (the Kirchnerite opposition here largely opts for silence). YPF and Petronas Malaysian state energy company decide to locate the plant for the conversion of Vaca Muerta shale into liquefied natural gas (LNG), a total potential investment of US$30 billion, in Río Negro instead of Buenos Aires Province, arguing the former’s deeper waters and greater proximity to Vaca Muerta against the far more advanced infrastructure of Bahía Blanca but the winner’s acceptance and the loser’s rejection of RIGI is the real key, loading the dice against Kicillof (with Argentina at the wrong end of a US$16-billion lawsuit in a Manhattan court due to his botched 2012 nationalisation of YPF when economy minister). A Pyrrhic victory since doubts are already sown in Malaysian minds as to the risks of a vindictive Kicillof riding pushback against austerity to win in 2027 and scupper the project. Federal judge Sebastián Casanello sends Trotskyite picket leader Eduardo Belliboni to trial for the fraudulent administration of welfare benefits. Santiago Caputo gives his first interview after over seven months at the heart of government. Venezuelan election day coincides with the inauguration of the Rural Society farm show (on its final day) with Milei promising to lift export duties and capital controls along with other tax cuts and more deregulation but without offering an approving audience any dates. Over 1.5 million people visit the exhibition during its 11 days. In Paris Bolivian-born José “Maligno” Torres Gil wins a totally unexpected Olympic gold medal in BMX freestyle cycling.
AUGUST
W32. Former first lady Fabiola Yáñez (now in Madrid) accuses Alberto Fernández of gender violence, totally eclipsing in media coverage the rather more serious (in terms of damage to the state at any rate) charges against him steering juicy commissions from fraudulent insurance contracts with government departments in the direction of presidential cronies – the accusations of wife-bashing stem from the phone-tapping evidence from the earlier scandal. The total hypocrisy of Alberto Fernández (who described himself in 2020 as “Argentina’s first feminist president”) with his inclusive language and his bogus partnership with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner perhaps explains in retrospect why voters opted for Milei’s brutal sincerity rather than more moderate options, winning by default – nor is Fernández alone among Peronists with such sex offenders as Alperovich, Espinoza and Brieger also featuring in the year’s news. Nor the only Peronist in discredit in this week with former Domestic Trade secretary Guillermo Moreno receiving a conditional prison sentence of three years for airbrushing INDEC inflation data. City Mayor Jorge Macri cracks down on the use of mobile telephones in classrooms. Saint Cajetan’s Day sees thousands of the impoverished flock to the Liniers church named after the Neapolitan saint, as always, to implore “peace, bread and work.” In Paris Argentina clinches a silver medal in mixed yachting.
W33. The gender violence charges against Alberto Fernández remain at the top of the news but of more significance to the course of events is inflation now down on its all fours with the INDEC figure of four percent posted for July – the key item of food and beverages is even lower at 3.2 percent with services hitting the middle class the main culprit while core inflation is 3.8 percent. It still remains to be seen how much of this success is due to recession with the economy beginning to revive and how much due to an overvalued currency due to currency controls more Kirchnerite than Austrian, discouraging exports and hence the accumulation of Central Bank reserves. The former first lady’s testimony of over four hours at the Argentine consulate in Madrid include being forced into an abortion and excessive consumption of alcohol and marijuana in a “living hell” of conjugal life along with “psychological terrorism,” dating the mistreatment back to 2016 or long before Fernández reached the presidency – the ex-president predictably denies the charges. In midweek Fernández de Kirchner testifies against her would-be assassins but broadly hints that the responsibility extends way beyond them since such an attempt would not have been possible “without coordination with the hegemonic media and the judicial branch, where the economic powers are concentrated,” adding: “Some people cannot stand that a woman is right.” Bus fares are hiked 37 percent in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (AMBA) but still remain the lowest in the country outside La Rioja while universities fail to open on the first day of the week to protest a nugatory pay increase of three percent plus two percent in September. Nahuel Sotelo, 29, of the ultra-Catholic Frente Joven grouping linked to Opus Dei moves from the Buenos Aires provincial assembly to replace Francisco Sánchez (a Bullrich protégé) as Worship secretary – Sánchez is tagged for excessive travel expenses but has also made offensive statements politically incorrect even by the standards of the libertarian government (in the same week Milei speaks of prison as a socialist paradise offering free lodging and “plenty of gay sex” at taxpayers’ expense). A government decree gives the AFA Argentine Football Association one year to amend its statutes and allow limited companies (SAD in their Spanish acronym) to run football clubs. The French rugby players accused of rape in Mendoza are released.
W34. In a major setback for the government Congress knocks back Decree 256/2024 giving SIDE a 100-billion-plus bonus by a 156-52 vote with some PRO deputies voting against the libertarian government for the first time at Macri’s behest and to Bullrich’s annoyance for “siding with the mafias” – most deputies seems to assume that revival of the SIDE name also means a return to the old SIDE “Big Brother” political snooping, remaining indifferent to the costs of cybersecurity. This bad news follows the bicameral commission monitoring intelligence falling under the hostile chairmanship of Senator Lousteau (UCR-City) with Kirchnerite backing on the previous day. The senators (who up their remuneration from seven to nine million pesos that week, more than double the presidential paycheque but less than the pension of Alberto Fernández, and then have to roll it back) approve a bill to give pensioners full compensation for January inflation with Milei immediately pledging a presidential veto. Lijo makes his first Senate appearance in midweek to defend his Supreme Court nomination and does not impress, not even Vice-President Villarruel heading the session. These intelligence and judicial issues in particular and her handling of the Senate in general make for escalating tension with Villarruel (as admitted by Francos) – and also with a Macri increasingly apprehensive about the government being more interested in cannibalising PRO votes than in a coalition. Amid a continuing wealth of detail to back the gender violence charges against Alberto Fernández, Decree 747/2024 quashes Decree 823/2021 obliging all state agencies to contract their insurance with Nación Seguros SA – the source of the juicy commissions and hence the root of the scam. All 61 state universities close down for 48 hours to press for pay increases with the diplomatic corps also feeling the pinch (loudly) while union assemblies snarl air traffic with widespread delays and almost 30 cancellations – meanwhile a Washington DC court rules against Argentina over the irregular nationalisation of Aerolíneas Argentinas, ordering the payment of US$340 million to the hedge fund Titan Consortium buying up the legal rights of the expropriated Spanish group Marsans. In other news, Jones Huala is deported from Chile, the La Rioja provincial government follows up creation of the ‘chacho’ currency by defaulting on its debt pending further negotiations and the libertarian influencer Daniel ‘Gordo Dan’ Parisini wins the Martín Fierro Digital prize.
W35. La Libertad Avanza parliamentary ranks drop a member in each house – the Mendoza deputy Lourdes Arrieta leaves the “forces of heaven” just before expulsion after almost seven weeks of noisy repentance for the Ezeiza prison visit to Astiz & Co (for which she blames Congress Speaker Martín Menem and Bullrich, among others), and the Formosa senator Francisco Paoltroni for not only roundly rejecting Lijo’s Supreme Court nomination but also blaming Santiago Caputo for the “bad idea” of picking that paradigmatic “caste” member. Arrieta has a point – how can the libertarian creed possibly have anything in common with the totalitarian model of military dictatorship? García-Mansilla’s turn to appear before the Senate Appointments Committee where he indirectly upholds Paoltroni by naming Santiago Caputo as the source of his Supreme Court nomination. Milei duly vetoes the Senate’s pension bill. Misiones provincial deputy Germán Kiczka is arrested for heading a paedophile ring while in neighbouring Corrientes missing Loan Peña stays in the news. Franco Colapinto (21) becomes the first Argentine in Formula 1 racing in over two decades, joining the Williams team with strong financial backing (Bizarrap, Mercado Libre).
SEPTEMBER
W36. The month starts with the PAIS tax being slashed from 17.5 to 7.5 percent – more imports subsidised by crawling peg devaluation with improved private-sector credit is feared but welcomed by Milei as taming prices while a 2024 trade surplus estimated at US$16 billion permits some leeway. Yet there is concern about the impact of more imports on still negative Central Bank reserves (keeping country risk above 1,500 points due to the limited debt repayment capacity) with world soy prices low and exports being held back – the persistence of ‘cepo’ currency and capital controls leads Pablo Gerchunoff to dub Milei a monetarist Peronist. On Industry Day the following day Milei proceeds to rubbish import substitution. Milei’s anarcho-capitalist principles do not prevent him from decreeing limits on the access to public information, defining information as ceasing to be public domain the moment it enters “the private sphere of the official” (which could cover a multitude of sins) with “working papers” also off limits – “A most illiberal libertarian” is the headline of James Neilson’s column that week. The decree mutilates the 2016 Access to Public Information Law, an iconic landmark of the Macri Presidency. The 39th birthday party of former first lady Fabiola Yáñez violating lockdown or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner using presidential aircraft to fly down newspapers to her Patagonian retreat could thus be covered as “the private sphere.” But perhaps the roots lie in a literal case of the tail wagging the dog except that it is Milei’s English mastiffs (and stupid questions about them) which are doing the wagging. Yet this is surely using a cannon to kill a mosquito. Two letter-bombs of low potency are sent to the office of Rural Society president Nicolás Piño but do no more than bruise a secretary’s hand – militant vegans are suspected ahead of hard-core terrorists. Congress fails to muster the two-thirds majority to override the presidential veto of the pension bill, not helped by Kirchnerite and leftist deputies using the violent clashes between security forces and a group of demonstrators to walk out to express their solidarity at the expense of quorum. Following the national government’s discontinuation of AMBA bus subsidies, City Mayor Jorge Macri agrees on the full transfer of 31 bus lines with the seven billion pesos of subsidies coming out of municipal coffers but Kicillof takes the issue to the Supreme Court. Employees of the Garrahan children’s hospital go on strike.
W37. Congress this time reaches quorum but not the two-thirds majority to override the presidential veto of their reform bill with the 153 opposition votes thwarted by “87” heroes” amid violent protests outside Congress. For the first time this year monthly inflation goes up but the difference between August’s 4.2 percent and July’s four percent hardly worries anybody – should the slight uptick be read as an incipient sign of economic recovery? More concern over airport chaos throughout the week with 37,000 passengers stranded and over 300 flights affected due to union “informative assemblies.” The 12-digit booster for SIDE is finally nixed by a 49-11 vote in the Senate. The IMF makes an unusual concession to Milei by removing the Chilean economist Rodrigo Valdés, the head of their Western Hemisphere Department and a frequent target of presidential criticism, from negotiations with Argentina. Economy Minister Caputo bans town halls from feeding municipal taxes into public service billing as part of his drive to hold down prices. Thierry Decoud, trustee of the Río Turbio coal mine in Santa Cruz, is fired for fishing for bribes from an Israeli company. Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s controversial president throughout the last decade of the past century, dies at 86.
W38. The week begins with the statutory date for sending the Budget to Congress (S15) being honoured but little else – painting without numbers. Rather than presenting the 2025 Budget to a half-empty Congress on a Sunday evening, Milei defines budgets for all time as always needing to be balanced, whatever the economic cycle – if revenues exceed expectations in a boom, taxes must be cut and if they fall in a recession, state spending will have to take a further hit, ruling out either pro-cyclical or anti-cyclical spending. Instead of defining expenditure and looking for the revenue, Milei turns this on its head to fix intake and then adjust outlay accordingly. Almost the only number in his conceptual speech is to inform provincial governors that they would have to cut their spending by US$60 billion, triggering strident protests from almost all governors with Francos trying to reassure them that not all these cuts would have to come next year. A parallel budget bill is submitted with plenty of numbers, forecasting five percent growth and 18.3 percent inflation for next year with a primary fiscal surplus of 1.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (in the same week INDEC reports GDP as contracting 3.4 percent in the first half of the year after plunging 5.2 percent in the first quarter with 7.6 percent unemployment in midyear) – not entirely clear if there is a serious intention of approving the 2025 Budget although Congress defeats create doubts abroad. The inflation forecast of 18.3 percent in a supposedly fast-growing economy is wildly optimistic as even below the crawling peg devaluation of a monthly two percent. Forecasting doubled export duty intake also worries farmers. Milei decrees aviation an “essential service” which may not fall below half of normal activity as strikes disguised as union assemblies continue – the government also revives talk of privatising Aerolíneas. City Hall and the Economy Ministry reach an agreement at the Supreme Court to honour its ruling awarding the Federal Capital 2.95 percent of federal revenue-sharing funds (slashed to 1.4 percent in 2020) with the outstanding 1.55 percent to be remitted weekly. A record national debt of almost US$456 billion is posted, up from the US$368.2 billion inherited last December (although then omitting both Central Bank liabilities and export arrears). Milei rewards the “87 heroes” with a barbecue in Olivos presidential residence for which they have to pay but four of the five Radical deputies helping to salvage his veto are suspended by their party. The plot sickens in the gender violence charges against Alberto Fernández when an audio file of him insulting his ex-partner almost non-stop is leaked to the press. A pluralistic Pope Francis meets Human Capital Minister Pettovello and CGT secretaries-general in the same week. Venezuela and Argentina start issuing meaningless tit-for-tat arrest warrants against each other’s presidents.
W39. While INDEC officially places over half the population below the poverty line in the first half of the year (52.9 percent with 18.1 percent destitute), Milei is legitimately abroad giving his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, taking a fierce bite at the Big Apple by slamming his hosts as “ideological and socialist” with its “collectivist” Agenda 2030 (also rejected by the likes of Russia, Nicaragua, North Korea and Iran) while placing Argentina “in the vanguard of the defence of liberty” – a speech widely criticised as gratuitous isolationism from the global mainstream, retreating into an anachronistic nation-state past instead of accelerating into a future technology crossing frontiers. The previous day Milei holds his third meeting with Musk and rings the bell at Wall Street pledging “zero deficit” and hailing “four months without pickets.” But his promise to exit the cepo capital controls “once there is zero inflation under the macro-economic programme” sounds like never with his explanation of “zero inflation” too complicated by half (after deducting international inflation and crawling peg monthly devaluation of two percent) – unfortunately books are usually judged by their covers on global money markets. Meeting around the UN General Assembly, Mondino and the new British Foreign Secretary David Lammy effectively revive the 2018 Foradori-Duncan understanding by agreeing to a monthly Córdoba stopover for flights between Sao Paulo and the Malvinas as well as humanitarian flights to the islands so that families of the 1982 war dead can again visit their graves. INDEC reports economic activity as 1.7 percent up between June and July (thanks mainly to a 23.6 percent surge of the farming sector due to a favourable comparison with last year’s drought) although construction is 14.8 percent down and manufacturing industry 5.6 percent in year-on-year comparisons which also show consumer spending as 13.7 percent down, according to a private study – even so the uptick raises hopes of poverty falling below half the population by the end of the year. In other news, the government opens skies further by permitting airlines to operate with foreign crews and aircraft; the tax whitewash is extended until the end of October and Supreme Court Chief Justice Horacio Rosatti is re-elected. On the last day of the month Health Minister Mario Russo is fired and replaced by his namesake Mario Lugones, a change widely attributed to Santiago Caputo (since the new minister’s son Rodrigo is a consultancy partner of the star spin doctor). Milei makes a U-turn on China, which he describes as a “very interesting” trade partner” because “they ask for nothing” in an interview with Susana Giménez. Bukele spends the last five days of the month here but his activities here are a mystery until almost the end of the visit when he holds a two-hour meeting with Milei and calls on Congress, telling them that there is no comparison between the security problems of Argentina and El Salvador.
OCTOBER
W40. Milei vetoes a Congress law to defend university spending just hours after a huge march in its support – not quite the dimensions of A23 (approaching half a million rather than a million) but massive enough, backed by at least 70 percent of public opinion. With the chainsaw and balanced budgets on one side against an adamant defence of university spending levels on the other, both sides reduce the issue to purely fiscal and financial questions of money rather than the quality of education with no reform or modernisation proposals coming from either. Financing would be easier without a student body of 2.1 million, including 385,000 at UBA (of whom only a quarter graduate) but neither university fees nor entrance exams are broached. The real challenge is to recruit the private sector – Argentina’s university spending halves most European and North American countries as a GDP percentage but is almost all state with no endowments (Harvard alone has US$50 billion). Nor should primary and secondary education be denied attention. On the first day of the month the Chamber of Deputies approves a single paper ballot for national voting by a 143-87 vote with all the 'nays coming from Unión por la Patria (the left abstains). The chainsaw continues slashing with the Mint and the rail museum institute among its casualties. Increases at the start of the month see rents and prepaid health schemes moving up more than most.
W41. The Chamber of Deputies fails to override the presidential veto of its university financing bill with its 159-84 vote falling short of the requisite two-thirds majority (84 heroes instead of 87, including five Peronists) – ex-president Macri’s intervention in favour of the veto proves decisive. University lecturers and non-academic staff respond with a “total strike” the next day. After failing to break the four percent barrier for four months running, the September inflation figure of 3.5 percent finally does the trick with the key item of food and beverages well below average at 2.2 percent. Fernández de Kirchner announces that she has decided to yield to the pressures of the “Draft Cristina” campaign which she herself had organised along with La Cámpora militants and run for the Justicialist Party chair to replace the scandal-stricken Alberto Fernández for the sake of Peronist unity – the move seems to doom La Rioja Governor Ricardo Quintela’s bid launched in mid-August. Other hospitals join the continuing unrest (a 48-hour strike of non-medical staff) at the Garrahan Children’s Hospital. Villarruel spends the week in Europe around the UN International Conference on Victims of Terrorism in Spanish Basque country – meanwhile in Madrid Fabiola Yáñez refuses to hand in her mobile telephone as evidence for her gender violence charges. Sir Paul McCartney aka ‘Macca’ defies his 82 years to rock River Plate’s Monumental stadium.
W42. A week in which the usual political and economic news issues are somewhat displaced with fading British pop star Liam Payne (31) falling to his death in a Palermo Hollywood boutique hotel, stunning music fans worldwide, and Colapinto-mania reaching fever pitch. All grabbing rather more attention than the sole speaker Kicillof calling for the movement’s unity in his Peronist Loyalty Day speech – wishful thinking because both Cristina Kirchner’s authority as the supreme voice since 2007 and Kicillof’s clout as ruling over a third of the country give each an unassailable claim to a leadership which only one can hold, conflicting certainties (unless the ex-president imagines that the disastrous 2019-2023 experiment can be more successfully repeated with Kicillof the 2027 presidential candidate while she remains the power behind the throne as party chair). The trial of former Health Minister Ginés González García for the ‘VIP vaccination’ scandal (i.e. queue-jumping for Covid-19 vaccines organised for friends of the Frente de Todos government during the 2020-22 coronavirus pandemic) is confirmed with a lien of 20 million pesos slapped on his assets – the very next day (O18) González García is dead at the age of 79. SIGEN comptrollers replace the Auditor-General’s office as the agency entrusted with university audits. The IMF reduces its debt surcharges worldwide, thus saving the country over US$3 billion while at the same time losing an appeal in London against a sentence ordering the payment of over 1.3 billion euros (the case involves Kicillof when Economy minister manipulating the 2013 growth figure downward to welch growth-linked bonds). Energy Secretary Eduardo Rodríguez Chirillo resigns and is replaced by María del Carmen Tettamanti (close to Bullrich). The government presents a bill to Congress permitting divorce by mutual consent to be settled administratively at a civil registry rather than judicially in court. At the start of the week a solemnly black-clad Villarruel meets Pope Francis in the Vatican while on the same day Milei hosts ‘BoJo’ (controversial former British prime minister Boris Johnson) at the Casa Rosada here. Columbus Day (O12) reverts to its traditional designation of “Día de la Raza” from the Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity, as it had been rebranded in 2010 in recognition of indigenous peoples. The IDEA business symposium convenes in Mar del Plata with mixed feelings in a halfway house between recession and recovery – celebrating the fiscal surplus maintained throughout the year as giving them more credit with the public sector borrowing requirement no longer crowding them out of the market (even if fiscal balance keeps taxation high) but also hamstrung by the cepo currency and capital controls which are so hard to shed. Two words beginning with the same pronoun are also the talk of the symposium – protectionism (under threat) and productivity (a challenge to improve and become more competitive in a freer economy). The seven-storey Torre Monumental in Retiro (formerly known as the Torres de los Ingleses, a 1910 centenary gift from the British community) re-opens to the public.
W43. In a weekend interview Milei says that he would like to put “the last nail in the coffin of Kirchnerism with Cristina [Fernández de] Kirchner inside,” predictably raising a storm with various critics referring to the 2022 attempt on her life – meanwhile Kicillof with far less reaction drives his own nail into that coffin by saying: “The logic between submission and treason has entered into crisis, causing bad results” in a repudiation of Kirchnerite “all or nothing” logic, challenging unconditional subservience. The next day the government launches a neo-Kirchnerite offensive against the press when Adorni announces the elimination of the IVA value-added tax exemption for all media (with no word on the much bigger tax breaks granted the Tierra del Fuego electronics assembly plants) – Milei also tends to pick more fights with anti-Kirchnerite journalists with the Bonellis of the “Clarín miente” (Clarín lies) so reviled by Cristina his target that week, a chronic inability to absorb even constructive criticism. The day after Milei turns 54 in celebratory mood (his birthday coinciding with the anniversary of a frustrating first round in 2023). Economy Minister Caputo (named “Finance Minister of the Year” by LatinFinance publication) goes to Washington but no immediate progress towards a new IMF agreement (“it will take time”). The increasingly fractious Radical caucus – torn between libertarian fellow-travellers and centre-left opposition with Juntos por el Cambio coalition membership extinct as an option – at long last breaks up in the lower house (but not yet in the Senate) with a dozen deputies rebranded as Democracia para Siempre walking out under Facundo Manes as political fragmentation only grows. At the start of the week AFIP tax bureau is dissolved and reborn as ARCA with a slashed payroll and a pay ceiling of four million pesos – AFIP chief Florencia Misrahi remains at the helm for now but with no hands-on control over either internal revenue or customs duties. Mondino runs into friendly fire over allowing the F-word “Falklands” to slip into official parlance when discussing humanitarian visits to the 1982 war graves on the Malvinas. Vaca Muerta continues to set new records. The ex-nanny of Francisco (son of the estranged couple Fabiola Yáñez and Alberto Fernández) suggests that the former’s evidence of gender violence could have been “fabricated by Artificial Intelligence.”
W44. Mondino is sacked in midweek less than an hour after Argentina joins almost the rest of the world in a UN condemnation of the US trade embargo against Cuba (a semi-automatic continuation of a longstanding stance designed to maximise Third World support for Malvinas sovereignty claims) – Gerardo Werthein moves from the Washington Embassy to replace her with a mandate to purge the diplomatic corps of “enemies of freedom.” The UN resolution is passed by a 187-2 vote but since the two nays are the United States and Israel (the President’s two most revered countries) while the motion is presented by Cuba, Milei goes ballistic. Throughout her ministry Mondino was on the wrong side of both a nationalist wing headed by Villarruel and the “iron triangle” (the two Mileis plus Santiago Caputo) resenting her giving priority to commercial interests over ideological purity. Her exit leaves only half of the ministries in their original hands with the first anniversary still six weeks away. Almost her last action as minister is to welcome a new Spanish ambassador appointed after a five-month hiatus. The day of her dismissal also sees Milei denigrating Raúl Alfonsín on the 41st anniversary of his election victory as a “coup-monger” (for allegedly undermining the Radical-led Alliance government in 2001) as well as (for totally unrelated reasons) all public transport on strike except the buses whose union is at odds with the others. In other news, the Dubrovnik Hotel in Villa Gesell collapses with a final total of nine dead while Argentine goalie Emiliano ‘Dibu’ Martínez is awarded the Yashin Prize at the Ballon D’Or ceremony in Paris for the second year running with Colapinto still the flavour of the month.
NOVEMBER
W45. Trump returns to the White House with a 312-226 margin in the electoral college, reloaded with an edge in the popular vote (although undershooting his losing total in 2020) and majorities in both Houses. Perhaps envious of such hegemony with his own puny Congress caucuses and zero progress in overhauling the Supreme Court, Milei is quick to congratulate the once and future president for painting the White House red yet off-target in greeting him as a fellow-libertarian crusading against the deep state, given The Donald’s ultra-protectionism and isolationism (which Bullrich prefers to call “smart nationalism” and this journalist “MAGAlomania” in his column that week) – quite apart from the price impact of his protective tariffs, Trump being fiscally as well as politically incorrect with his tax cuts and deficit financing (with ink as red as Republican colours) could force US interest rates to be jacked up, sucking money away from emerging markets and global commodity prices instead of the massive dollar inflows of Milei’s pipe dreams (be careful what you wish for). Yet no real choice but to respect the result of a democratic election – something Trump has not always done. On the same day as Trump’s triumph, there is a vote in Argentina but with rather smaller numbers – instead of 155.4 million US citizens going to the polls, ex-president Fernández de Kirchner is proclaimed the new Partido Justicialista chair by a 13-1 vote in the Peronist party’s electoral council. But the impossibility of ignoring the elephant in the room pretty much crowds out local news in general.
W46. Milei flies up to Florida to join celebratory CPAC and American Conservative Union (ACU) meets, already angling for a free trade agreement with the US – beforehand he has already named Werthein’s replacement in Washington, fintech unicorn creator Alejandro ‘Alec’ Oxenford. The October inflation figure of 2.7 percent, the lowest since 35 months ago when Argentina was still in lockdown recession with the key item of food and beverages measuring 1.2 percent, gives him an extra boost – although it remains to be seen whether Trump’s cocktail of major tax cuts, swelling an already huge fiscal deficit and protective tariff surcharges will not result in an inflation which may prove contagious. In midweek the Federal Criminal Cassation Court confirms the six-year prison sentence for corruption imposed on Fernández de Kirchner by a lower instance in late 2022 along with a disqualification from public office – although a convicted felon being elected POTUS in the world’s superpower in the previous week seems to make this relative, not to mention the libertarian craving for keeping a rival with such negative popularity ratings in next year’s midterm race. No danger of going to jail given her age (72 next February) and with a Supreme Court appeal still pending but Milei jumps on the confirmed conviction to rule her unfit for her privileged pensions of almost 22 million pesos (a criterion he does not seem to apply to electoral candidacy), also stripping her former vice-president Amado Boudou in the process. Trump’s triumph less than a week after Mondino’s exit is evidently adding an extra bite to international policy with the COP29 copout – Milei pulls the entire Argentine delegation out of the UN climate change conference in Baku. Back home months of conflict with Aerolíneas trade unions end when agreement is reached on a higher pay increase of 16 percent in exchange for productivity improvements increasing flying time for pilots and the elimination of various special fringe benefits such as business class travel for employees and their families. A Congress session to repeal a decree granting the Economy Ministry a free hand in foreign debt negotiations is thwarted when falling short of quorum with several inland Peronist absentees due to pressures from their provincial governors. In other news, the tax whitewash clears the barrier of US$20 billion; postal services are deregulated; the Gasoducto Néstor Kirchner is renamed Gasoducto Perito Francisco Pascasio Moreno (after the 19th-century scientist and explorer who opened up much of Patagonia for Argentina); the Central Bank places the new 20,000-peso banknotes in circulation.
W47. Milei gives a concrete example of his self-definition: “I’m mad but I don’t eat glass” when he berates multilateralism at the G20 summit in Brazil but refrains from being a party-pooper by duly signing the final statement while grandstanding his dissent with several of its central progressive points both before and after, even overcoming mutual dislike to join his “corrupt Communist” host president Lula in a surly photo – as one of just two G20 members with barely half the trillionaire economies of the rest (the other is South Africa representing a continent), Argentina is fortunate to belong and Milei does not push that luck. Despite Milei’s explicitly pro-Western alignment, he spends more time with non-Western leaders (China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi) even if his Rio presence is a sandwich between visits here by France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Meloni. The San Miguel launch of “Las Fuerzas del Cielo” (“The Forces of Heaven”)” as the “armed guard” of the libertarian movement for its “cultural battles” in the previous weekend draws flak but overreacting to overrated rhetorical overkill – the weaponry of the Gordo Dan & Co influencers is strictly digital and their pseudo-Roman stage setting decidedly tacky with coarse language replacing the lack of oratory as a pitch to the Greater Buenos Aires lumpenproletarian vote. The latent tension between President and veep becomes explicit eviction from his circle of trust when he rejects Villarruel as too close to the “caste” (while implicitly spurning Macri too by also linking her to the “círculo rojo” establishment with which the PRO chairman is identified). The non-Kirchnerite parties in Congress fall one short of quorum to debate the 'ficha limpia' (“clean sheet”) bill to bar the electoral candidacies of those with confirmed convictions (i.e. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) as Speaker Martín Menem lifts the session with stragglers still arriving. Francos announces a tender for the Hidrovía waterway (transporting some 80 percent of national exports) in what is a privatisation in all but name since any bidder with state capital is barred (thus apparently ruling out any Chinese offer). The Ciccone money-printing plant whose fraudulent acquisition previously sent Boudou to jail is closed with its future use limited to passports.
W48. More a case of what did not happen in this week – ‘ficha limpia’ again strikes out on quorum, Foreign Minister Werthein does not attend the 40th anniversary of the Beagle Channel Peace Treaty in the Vatican and Alberto Fernández does not answer any questions (except from his defence lawyer) in his first courtroom appearance in the insurance fraud case. This time the government contribution to frustrating ficha limpia goes beyond an unhelpful Speaker with no less than eight libertarian deputies shunning the sessions – even if 31 of their colleagues show up to back the bill and even if the octet would not have clinched quorum (with just 116 deputies in attendance as against 128 the previous week). This does not prevent PRO leaders from voicing suspicions that the government is nurturing Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as the exclusive midterm rival at PRO’s expense as the ideal punching bag. Werthein’s Roman absence is widely attributed to an assumed clash between Milei and his leftist Chilean counterpart Gabriel Boric but Pope Francis may well have been the real target of the snub to remove any remote chance of the aged and ailing pontiff visiting his homeland next year to raise social justice banners in the midterms. Across the estuary the Frente Amplio returns to power in the Uruguayan run-off with Yamandú Orsi beating the incumbent centre-right coalition’s Alvaro Delgado by 49.84 to 45.87 percent in a high turnout of around 90 percent – the winner is congratulated impersonally here by the Foreign Ministry rather than his future Mercosur colleague Milei. Teamster Pablo Moyano, one of the three CGT secretaries-general until then, walks out of the labour umbrella. Neuquén Lieutenant-Governor Gloria Ruiz is suspended after being caught transferring some 30 million pesos of public funds into her brother’s bank account. Ex-minister Roberto Dromi, 79, a key figure in the privatisations of the 1989-1999 Menem presidency, dies while watching Racing win the South American Cup. Behind specific news items, the future of Argentina’s seemingly eternal protectionism comes into question when September’s reduction of the PAIS levy on imports from 17.5 to 7.5 percent is followed by freeing up to a monthly US$3,000 for purchases abroad (up to US$400 duty-free). While Milei is verbally committed to ending import substitution, libertarian free trade dogmas are boosted by the shorter-term objective of sustaining inflation shrinkage via imports pressuring prices downwards (with a trade surplus projected to reach US$17 billion this year creating some margin for freeing imports and with tariffs of up to 73 percent leaving plenty of room for reduction) but local industry argues that it cannot possibly be expected to become competitive without deep tax and labour reforms beyond deregulation to give them a level playing-field against the underground economy at home as much as imports from abroad while frozen public works perpetuate deficient infrastructure – with no excuse for low productivity. Lower inflation is also giving the private sector less wiggle room for pricing their way out of trouble. Lower house Budget Committee chairman José Luis Espert has some harsh words for lachrymose businessmen selling shoddy goods at stratospheric prices. But even if Milei proposes a free-trade agreement with the United States (and China), it remains to be seen how moving in the opposite direction to Trump’s protective tariffs will go.
DECEMBER
W49. The most historic news of this week is clearly a free-trade agreement signed right at its end in Montevideo between Mercosur and the European Union after a quarter-century of negotiations, potentially changing the lives of some 800 million people (a tenth of the planet), but since parliamentary ratification in EU member states is still pending, probably not worth entering into detail at this stage. A more immediate driver of news is the Peronist Senator Edgardo Kueider (Entre Ríos) being stopped for a routine Paraguayan frontier check shortly after midnight in mid- week and found to have an undeclared US$211,102 (also some pesos, guaranís and possibly cryptocoins but it is the greenbacks which make the news) in his car. The Supreme Court sends Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to
trial for the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran as a suspected cover-up for the 1994 AMIA Jewish community centre bomb massacre – the ex-president’s response is to call for a constitutional reform which, apart from eliminating mid terms, gives other branches of government the right to declare court decisions unconstitutional and imposes the election of judges by popular vote. In midweek Milei preaches to the converted at a CPAC in the Hilton Hotel, urging a redoubled “cultural battle” against “lefties” and lambasting the “mendacious” media. The government half-heartedly calls for extraordinary sessions to debate the elimination of PASO primaries but not the 2025 Budget while Martín Menem is re-elected Congress Speaker. Adorni announces the government’s intention of charging foreigners attending state universities or public hospitals. The government man dates fitness exams for over 40,000 temporary and contracted state employees (multiple choice) to be run by Sturzenegger’s Deregulation and State Transformation Ministry with a high pass rate in the initial stages. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) rates the Argentine peso as the world’s most revalued currency, appreciating over 40 percent in the first 10 months of the year. Ex-minister Ferraro dies in midweek at the age of 69 – his February exit was attributed at the time to running afoul of then-Cabinet chief Posse or simply having little to do without any public works but in hindsight may have been mostly health reasons. After a five-year hiatus 140 relatives of the 1982 South Atlantic war dead pay them tribute at their graves in Darwin cemetery on the Malvinas Islands.
W50. Kueider is ejected from the Senate as “morally unfit” by an overwhelming 60-6 votes only eight days after his transgression with the expulsion standing despite such procedural irregularities as Villarruel heading the session while acting president (with Milei off to Italy for a rightist fest) or the senator being denied any right of defence (since under house arrest in Asunción). Not the week’s only scandal as the Miami real estate wealth of both PRO caucus chief Cristian Ritondo and DGI internal revenue head Andrés Vázquez come to light while the extravagantly freaky 60th birthday party of federal prosecutor Ramiro González raises eyebrows – corruption is regaining prominence as a major issue with inflation now down to almost crawling peg devaluation levels with the 2.4 percent posted for November by INDEC in midweek (with the key item of food and beverages below one percent). The government tries to pin the odium of Kueider on Kirchnerism on the grounds that he was elected on an “Alberto/Cristina” Frente de Todos ticket in 2019 but it is Unión por la Patria which opportunistically pushes his expulsion hardest (with a La Cámpora militant substitute warming up on the side-lines) and nor can the Milei administration dodge guilt by association with Kueider voting for some of its key legislation throughout the year (the source of the US$211,102, malicious tongues inquire?) and being Santiago Caputo’s favourite to head the bicameral intelligence commission. Meanwhile graft probes of 28 other senators continue to lead nowhere. Milei celebrates his first year in office with a nationwide broadcast promising happy days with “the recession over” and basking in the popularity of having reduced both inflation and country risk to a fraction of a year ago, in large measure thanks to a constant fiscal surplus – these achievements are both impressive and genuine but his “chainsaw” is nevertheless scratching the surface of the deadwood in both public and private sectors if shedding only around 30,000 jobs in each (outside the construction industry) with no visible basis for his claim of eightfold the structural reforms of the Carlos Menem Presidency. A year of austerity beyond doubt but also some smoke and mirrors masked by “cultural wars” while backed by an overvalued currency and continuing cepo currency and capital controls with almost all the bad news being crowded into the first quarter also feeding a sensation of progress even if often a case of two steps back and one step forward – an already deficient infrastructure has also been held back beyond the energy sector where the private sector is accelerating investment to tap Vaca Muerta shale. Despite an aversion to gender politics, the removal of the pickets as the middlemen of the social welfare system is largely the achievement of the two surviving female ministers. The nationwide broadcast also causes confusion with the announcement that taxes (but not the taxation) will be reduced by 90 percent with a tax simplification next year. During the weekend Misrahi is removed from the ARCA helm – for having the impudence to tax the heavily libertarian world of streamers, influencers, trolls, youtubers and bloggers (a new caste?) according to Adorni at least – although it remains uncertain whether her successor Juan Pazo will be any less nominal over the existing DGI and Customs heads (Vázquez and Andrés Velis). Trump names his man in Buenos Aires as from next month as Cuban-born South Florida doctor and healthcare tycoon Peter Lamelas while the local equivalent of the latter’s world comes under fire with the seven leading prepaid schemes facing prosecution for “cartel practices” from the CNDC anti-monopoly watchdog. A Peronist summit in Moreno at the start of the week brings the movement’s leadership together without achieving any consensus, prior to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner formally taking the Partido Justicialista chair in midweek. Ex-deputy Héctor Recalde, long the CGT’s chief labour lawyer, dies at 86 on the day of the Moreno meet which pays him tribute.
W51. Formal talks for a new programme and loan agreement with the MF have begun, it is confirmed from Washington. Economic growth of 3.9 percent between the second and third quarters is posted but still heading for a negative calendar year. Shell replace Malaysia’s Petronas as YPF’s partner in developing an LNG plant. The rocky relationship with Venezuela, especially since Argentina rejected Maduro’s July 28 re-election as fraudulent, hits a new bump in the road with the arrest of a Border Guard lance-corporal upon entry at the airport on espionage charges when seeking to visit his Venezuelan wife in Caracas. Yet another trial against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is confirmed – this time for money-laundering via her family’s Patagonian Hotesur and Los Sauces hotel chain. The Supreme Court nixes the Formosa provincial constitution clause permitting indefinite gubernatorial re-election which has kept eight-term Peronist Governor Gildo Insfrán in power since 1995. For its part the government removes a 2006 decree limiting the Armed Forces to resisting foreign foes, permitting them action against domestic terrorists and control of the frontiers. Milei’s Italian jaunt is accompanied by fast-track citizenship. The summons against Alberto Fernández on the gender violence charges lodged by his ex-partner is indefinitely postponed following three postponements. Literary critic, essayist and pundit Beatriz Sarlo (aged 82) dies, which, along with the passing of Juan José Sebreli in the previous month (two days short of turning 94), leaves a vacuum of progressive intellectuals hardly replaced by libertarian bloggers, whose main targets this month with Casa Rosada blessing are perversely such antitheses of Kirchnerism as Villarruel (for popularity ratings competing with Milei) and the veteran centrist Elisa Carrió (for being virtually the only politician to denounce Vázquez although the number of her bodyguards is made a more comfortable issue) – all part of a midterm electoral strategy of cannibalising PRO while polarising against a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner kept in the running as the opposite extreme. Argentina’s third president in the last 35 years with a five-letter surname beginning with “M” is clearly keener on emulating one (Menem) than the other (Macri) but should worry about the imitation becoming too complete with complacency over corruption. In sports news, Vélez Sarsfield clinch the football league championship while the Olimpia prize for the outstanding Argentine sportsperson of the year goes jointly to 'Dibu' Martínez and Colapinto (if Samuel Johnson described second marriages as the triumph of hope over experience, then surely Colapinto is the triumph of hype over achievement).
W52. Not much news in a week neatly bisected by Christmas Day, at least not before our Boxing Day press time. The PAIS tax ends its five-year existence at the start of the week, easing imports and travel abroad alike with potential balance of payments impact; the tense mating dance between past and present presidents Macri and Milei over next year’s electoral alliances continues with the former’s cousin Mayor Jorge Macri poised to call a separate election date for this City; dozens of Flybondi flights cancelled; the Nora Dalmasso murder is solved 18 years after. It only remains to wish all readers a Happy New Year.
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