News of editorial

All politics is local

Today 06:49 Tomorrow’s candidates should be judged as monitors of local governance rather than as projections of any national party. But before advising voters as to their perspective when casting their ballots, it is imperative to urge them to vote in the first place.

Clean slates – for greenbacks only

10-05-2025 07:25 At least two of this week’s main news items may be considered further setbacks in the fight against corruption. Every suspicion of a meticulously manipulated Senate result instead of free votes of conscience, while those complying with the conditions of last year’s tax whitewash might ask themselves why they went to all that trouble – a black week for removing the stain of corruption with no guarantee against more to come.

Will April showers bring May flowers?

03-05-2025 07:45 Critics of the exit from the ‘cepo’ currency and capital controls argue that it opens the door to speculative peso-dollar shuffles. Whether or not they are right will go much further towards defining the outcome of the October midterms than any cultural battles.

More than a nation mourns

26-04-2025 05:00 Rest in peace Franciscus.

Floating on air?

19-04-2025 06:00 Milei might echo Alfonsín by proclaiming: “Happy Easter, the dollar is in order” but early days – a more total exit from currency and capital controls by Macri in in late 2015 was even smoother, without ensuring him a happy ending.

Into More Frustrations

12-04-2025 05:06 A Ruby Tuesday for President Javier Milei while the world at large is in an acute age of uncertainty thanks to Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught.

A double date

05-04-2025 06:36 Milei has yet to realise (or admit, if he does realise) that Trump is taking the United States into precisely the same direction from which he himself is struggling to pull out Argentina.

Into More Frenzy

29-03-2025 06:11 Perhaps today’s economic situation is best explained by saying: “It’s the elections, stupid.”

Forever Autumn?

22-03-2025 07:11 There is already too much polarisation in politics at large – instead of extremes clashing, there is a need to meet in the middle for a serious debate about a complex issue.

Bahía Blanca as a wake-up call

15-03-2025 07:16 The devastation in Bahía Blanca should serve to sweep away any illusion that state responsibilities can be abdicated in the name of the laws of the market.

Towards a supremo’s court

01-03-2025 06:27 Both the presidential Supreme Court nominees, Ariel Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla, present problems. These are rather simpler in the latter case.

La $Libra no avanza

22-02-2025 06:05 There can be no excuse for a President turning into an influencer for such a risky venture. A trained economist should always check the facts before reaching conclusions.

Exeunt severally

15-02-2025 06:26 Volatility would seem to be the middle name of the Milei administration.

Super size peso

08-02-2025 06:46 The peso is a palpably overvalued currency. Denialism is not the solution but nor is devaluation.

Into More Funds?

01-02-2025 00:01 There seems to be a complacent assumption in many government circles that negotiations with the International Monetary Fund are a slam dunk now that Donald Trump occupies the White House.

A star is born(e)

25-01-2025 06:33 President Javier Milei returns home today from a stellar week abroad, but yet again Milei has wasted chances to promote overseas investment at an international forum.

Brave new world or tempest?

18-01-2025 06:49 Slaying the inflationary dragon is both the cornerstone of Milei’s economic policy and the key to electoral success, but the sequence between lower inflation and electoral triumph is not so linear.

Flotsam and jetsam not always adrift

11-01-2025 06:39 While so much could happen in the country and the world in the next nine months, everything now points to the midterms going Milei’s way, even if it will be a relative victory.

The year ahead

04-01-2025 06:24 An electoral year already anticipated well in advance offers no clearer horizons now that it has started.

end-of-year editorial

So long to 2024... and welcome to 2025

28-12-2024 16:41 The Milei presidency begins this year riding the crest of a wave but neither the rest of the world nor the existence of black swans can be ignored and nor is the economy the only issue.

The near in blood, the nearer bloody

21-12-2024 05:07 Time to stop being the snake biting its own tail and return to being the libertarian lion against the caste instead of co-opting it.

Party in both its meanings

14-12-2024 06:30 Depicting Edgardo Kueider as a pure Kirchnerite will not wash – not only has he delivered some key votes for the Milei government, he was also star spin doctor Santiago Caputo’s nominee to chair the bicameral intelligence commission.

The year of the lion

07-12-2024 06:17 Milei’s first year in office has seen much more grey than its inflamed and somewhat arbitrary crusade against the “caste” of drab democratic politics would care to admit.

Home away from Rome

30-11-2024 05:06 Returning Argentina to the world is not a straight or single line like any flight abroad – nor for that matter like domestic economic policy.

A little piece of heaven

23-11-2024 06:00 The launch of libertarian shock troops Las Fuerzas de Cielo was but one of various seismic movements in this jacaranda month of November.

A not so decisive decision

16-11-2024 05:52 This week’s court ruling seems to have done nothing to derail the widespread expectation of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner running in next year’s midterms as the focal opposition leader.

Trump card, or joker?

09-11-2024 06:06 Milei is entitled to celebrate the convincing Republican win as a supreme booster for a global trend towards the far right but would be rather less accurate if he hailed it as an advance of his libertarian crusade against the deep state.

Another one bites the dust

02-11-2024 06:50 The fiscal and macro-economic stability so obsessively sought by President Milei finds its antithesis in extreme administrative volatility, when political fragmentation could be permitting calmer waters.

A totalitarian all or a nihilistic nothing

26-10-2024 05:27 While verbally aspiring to ending Kirchnerism, Milei is doing much to revive it with his modus operandi.

Obscurity obstructs security

19-10-2024 06:46 Both Peronism and the business world are undergoing a transitional phase.

Reducing the issue

12-10-2024 06:16 Both sides fall into the error of reducing this issue to a budget tussle without bringing up the major structural problems of university education.

It’s the education, stupid

05-10-2024 06:24 When presenting the 2025 Budget in mid-September, Milei defined his fundamental fiscal principle as first defining the available revenue and then adjusting the spending to it – modernising the university system to that end could be an interesting application of that principle. But instead his primitive proposal is literally to cut university spending in half with his chainsaw.

The Wall Street shuffle

28-09-2024 06:27 Milei doubtless imagined that he was ringing his own Liberty Bell but it was also a self-excommunication from the international community which might well send alarm-bells ringing, not least among Wall Street investors.

Painting without numbers

21-09-2024 00:36 Milei’s maximalist stance last Sunday might have experience in mind: the logic of only obtaining half of the requested still being a substantial gain.

Nobody wins

14-09-2024 06:37 Milei risks his popularity with insensitivity towards pensioners in the name of maintaining a fiscal surplus.

Making public private

07-09-2024 05:55 Not the first contradiction with its self-image but a government calling itself libertarian and seeking to restrict access to public information is really starting to take the biscuit.

Libertarian entrapment

31-08-2024 05:21 The paradox of a libertarian government revering the free market while unable to exit bureaucratic Kirchnerite capital controls has already drawn comment but the reduction of the PAIS tax exposes another contradiction.

Tinkering and tailoring the judge and the spy

24-08-2024 05:55 While “Big Brother” espionage would seem to contradict the libertarian creed in general, the nomination of the controversial federal judge Ariel Lijo for the Supreme Court flies in the face of Milei’s electoral crusade against a corrupt “caste.”

Inflation down on its all fours?

17-08-2024 05:39 The main obstacle to zero inflation is zero certainty as to the future.

In default and by default

10-08-2024 05:45 The moral bankruptcy of the main opposition front is a vital lifeline for a government facing enormous difficulties in restructuring Argentina.

Between Tucumán and Asunción

13-07-2024 07:44 President Milei’s decision to skip the Mercosur summit does more to compromise Argentina’s future than his photograph and 10-point pact does to advance it.

Are youth votes wasted on the young?

06-07-2024 05:27 Electoral opportunism is at work.

When Loan is a national debt

29-06-2024 04:22 On the nationwide clamour for the reappearance of a missing child.

And so it begins

22-06-2024 05:03 Javier Milei now prepares to move into the second half of the calendar year amid every indication of a whole new ball game.

Bases loaded with grand slam yet to come

15-06-2024 06:50 The Senate vote was a close-run thing but perhaps Milei gains more from near defeat within Congress and violence outside than from a comfortable and peaceful victory.

Risky Investment Guarantee Inconsistencies

01-06-2024 05:45 The primacy of the fiscal over the economic causes problems elsewhere.

The pain in Spain falls mainly on the gain

25-05-2024 06:35 This dispute is far more easily personalised as being between President Milei and Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez rather than between the two nations.

Single digit should not mean single issue

18-05-2024 06:13 Single-digit inflation relieves the poor more than anybody but comes at a price – must they also be the ones to pay it?

Contradictions and multitudes

11-05-2024 06:07 The Javier Milei Presidency has never been short of contradictions.

Loading the bases

04-05-2024 05:43 With a government yet to complete its first 150 days and Senate passage of Milei’s mega-law still lying ahead, we are not even at the end of the beginning.