Stories that caught our eye: June 5 to 12

INFLATION DIPS AGAIN

Last month’s inflation was an identical 2.1 percent, according to both the INDEC national statistics bureau on Thursday afternoon and City Hall last Monday. At national level it was down from April’s 2.6 percent at an annual rate of 33.2 percent and 14.7 percent so far this year. The main culprits were communications (3.4 percent) and education (2.9 percent) while at the other end garments and footwear rose just 0.3 percent. The key item of food and beverages was also above the general average – 2.5 percent for INDEC and 2.8 percent for City Hall. Perhaps the best news was core inflation (excluding regulated and seasonal prices) falling below the barrier of two percent to 1.9 percent – it was an identical 2.1 percent to the overall figure for City Hall. Market expectations had hovered around 2.3 percent. Economy Minister Luis Caputo concluded: "It is only a question of time before inflation converges with international levels."

ADORNI FILES AT LONG LAST

Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni finally submitted his sworn statement of assets to the Anti-Corruption Office last Wednesday, just before the start of the World Cup, after being under intense pressure to do so for the past three months at least, including from within government ranks. Those assets, including real-estate investments, dollar savings and mortgage debts, showed a significant increase from the previous year, rising from 662 million to 944 million pesos. Adorni explained this growth as untaxed earnings, inheritances, donations and assets gaining in value. Over half his assets (570 million pesos) were property: flats in Caballito and La Plata and a house in the Indio Cuá gated community in Exaltación de la Cruz. The Cabinet chief also quantified his personal spending last year at 99.9 million pesos. Senator Patricia Bullrich (La Libertad Avanza-City), the ruling party caucus chief, was not impressed, interrupting the celebrations of her 70th birthday last Thursday to comment: “This is more than an error, it is an ethical omission in a government which has defined morality as a state policy.” On Tuesday, Adorni entered a simplified income tax regime while his wife Bettina Angeletti sought to whitewash her earnings retroactively with the recent “fiscal innocence” legislation but federal judge Ariel Lijo continues to investigate her participation in three state contracts involving possible conflicts of interest.

A NATION MOURNS

The wake for Carlos Alberto ‘el Indio’ Solari, who died early on June 5 at the age of 77, was a mass event like none since Argentina won the World Cup in late 2022, stretching into early last Monday with half a million people attending his wake in Avellaneda while twice that number were out in the streets, according to Buenos Aires Province government data, disrupting traffic but with no violent disturbances. His farewell brought together such feuding Peronists as Governor Axel Kicillof and deputy Máximo Kirchner while national government offers to organise Solari’s funeral were rejected by his family. The leader of the hugely popular Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota band, formed half a century ago, died from a stroke, according to a preliminary autopsy, after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for the past decade. As recently as a decade ago, Redonditos de Ricota shows were still drawing over a quarter million people. Last month the pop musician was awarded an honoris causa doctorate by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). The day before his death, another iconic figure from the past century, the actress and model Elva ‘Chunchuna’ Villfañe, ended her days at the age of 92.

MILEI VERSUS HARARI

The influential Israeli intellectual Yuval Noah Harari rebutted President Javier Milei’s idea to confer legal status on Artificial Intelligence in a Financial Times column headlined: “We must not grant AI agents legal personhood,” arguing that this move would erase all political and financial controls from the absence of any direct responsibility. Harari recalled that Milei had already unleashed the idea at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January but admitted his surprise at seeing it becoming a legislative proposal so soon. The Israeli thinker deplored the idea of AI being able to own assets, hire employees, lodge lawsuits and donate to political campaigns without human intervention or legal accountability, thus enabling them to become “experts in finding loopholes.” The superior productive capacity of AI agents counts less for the essayist than the total impossibility of arresting them if they decide to break the ground rules. Harari was responding to Milei’s column “Argentina invites AI to free itself,” also published in the Financial Times and co-authored with Deregulation & State Transformation Minister Federico Sturzenegger. Milei was more respectful than usual in the face of dissent, posting a message to Harari last Monday: “I’m already preparing my answer to see if we can dispel your fears!” and thanking him for this “fascinating and transcendental debate.”

UK TRADE PARTNER?

In what constitutes a historic switch for Argentine foreign policy, the government last weekend formalised its intention of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which also means back-door entry into a commercial alliance with the United Kingdom for the first time since the 1982 South Atlantic conflict. The request was formally delivered by Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno to New Zealand Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay. The CPTPP, representing approximately 15 percent of global economic output and a market of 595 million people, links 12 nations: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and, most recently, the United Kingdom making a post-Brexit entrance (even if Donald Trump turned his back on the partnership during his first term in 2017). Uruguay is also seeking to adhere.

CFK’S FIRST YEAR CONFINED

The first anniversary of ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s house arrest was marked last Wednesday afternoon by militants congregating outside her San José 1111 flat, organised by La Cámpora, while the senators and deputies of Unión por la Patria held a press conference to repudiate the “unjust and arbitrary” prison sentence against a “victim of political persecution,” describing it as a smokescreen to cloak the misgovernment of the libertarian administration and “the profound recession penetrating all the national territory.” Not even genocides and drug-traffickers are suffering as appalling prison conditions as Fernández de Kirchner, lower house caucus chief Germán Martínez complained. Back in Constitución the ex-president went out on the balcony to greet her well-wishers with a smile. Meanwhile court circles were commenting that one year into her prison sentence for fraudulent administration and the misallocation of public works funds, Fernández de Kirchner had yet to pay a peso of the 685 billion she had been judicially ordered to restore to the public purse.

JUDGE STILL IN LIMBO?

Following Senate approval of the judicial nomination of María Verónica Michelli on June 4, Justice Minister Juan Bautista Mahiques anticipated that President Javier Milei was under no obligation to decree it into reality, describing the upper house endorsement as permission to nominate rather than any duty. He also refused to describe the government’s attempt to block Michelli as a “scandal,” even if the resistance of La Libertad Avanza caucus chief Senator Patricia Bullrich made it appear as such, terming the withdrawal of judicial nominations “a constitutional prerogative” and par for the course under all previous presidencies (including his own brother Ignacio Mahíques, the prosecutor investigating then vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in the case of the Los Sauces hotel chain, whose nomination was withdrawn by then-president Alberto Fernández after obtaining Senate committee approval). Michelli’s nomination was resisted by the government as being the sister-in-law of Hugo Alconada Mon, a journalist probing government corruption.

FALSE ALARM

A bomb threat led to the total evacuation of the Economy Ministry last Monday afternoon but it turned out to be a false alarm.

FRIENDLY FRIENDLIES

Argentina won both its closing World Cup warm-ups prior to the tournament’s start on Thursday, beating Honduras 2-0 (a penalty converted by Lautaro Martínez and a Giuliano Simeone goal) during the weekend and Iceland 3-0 (a Lionel Messi penalty and goals by Valentín Barco and Thiago Almada) – a total of five goals, including two penalties. Coach Lionel Scaloni experimented with second-string players in both matches.