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Well, there's a natural modus tollens to consider when looking at the modus ponens there. It was expected that Latin-American immigrants would not stop voting in Latin-American politics after they came to the US. Now they're voting for Trump. Did they actually stop? Or is Trump actually more similar to Latin-American socialism than we expected?
It's kind of a matter of internet dissident lore how leftists cling to their mythos of being the anti-elite underdog and champion of the small and oppressed, even as their creed becomes the faith of rich and noble Brahmins yearning to defend their privilege. Perhaps more attention is due to how this is reflected on the other side - are rightists clinging to a mythos of being the noble elites of word and deed seeking to protect their rightfully earned place at the helm, but actually becoming the ideology of bombastic People's Tribunes promising to bring down the enemy elite and distribute gibs to their socioethnic clients? With some squinting, is the promise of Trump (imagined and played up by fans), distributor of free tendies, rewarder of loyals, crystalizer of traitors, not quite similar to that of a Perón, Bolsonaro or even (with identification filed off) Evo Morales?
Latin America isn't all socialists, Milei is a latin american. Latin America is populist, clownish and doesn't have as much long term thinking.
As soon as Milei stops the bleeding a bit they'll go back to voting for socialists again.
That's what truly unfortunate about it all. Argentina had the world's best performing stock market (in USD terms) last year. However I still wouldn't think it safe to invest there on a longer time horizon than 2 years. In a way it's like a longer half life 3x leveraged ETF: excellent for making money in the short term if things go well but woe unto he who leaves his money in there over time.
(Aside: this is yet another example showing why it is better for humanity if the common man has his ability to influence the world restricted)
I mean, UPRO has outperformed SPY going on decades now...
That's only because SPX has been getting artificially juiced and prevented by the FED from falling since the financial crisis (note that UPRO was inaugurated in 2009 so all graphs for it start after then). Of course the leveraged strategy overperforms when there's a big force preventing the underlying from naturally correcting. I don't think the Argentinian market has a similarly strong backer for it, and anyways if the Argentinian equivalent of the fed tried to do something like this their economy would shit the bed and then interest rate you'd need to pay to afford 3x leverage would likely wipe out any gains (not to even factor in currency depreciation since presumably you care about USD performance rather than in pesos).
Sounds like a frustrated bear excuse, my guy. If the government’s holding the line, it’d be stupid not to leverage. It makes no difference whether it is naturally a good strategy, or if the government is artificially propping it up. It has been working for 16 years, so you can’t use it as an example of a strategy that’s likely to fail on a 2 year timeframe.
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Latin America has a couple of really good leaders right now. I’m long on El Salvador and Argentina.
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To be fair, political parties are clinging to images of themselves that are most likely to get themselves power. They don’t exactly have a loyalty to “the people” except in the sense that in a democratic system, the legitimacy of a government is supposedly conferred by plebiscite. But I don’t think any politician really spends so much as ten minutes a day worrying about the welfare of the people in his own country. They care about winning elections, they care about pushing agendas important to their bloc. But I don’t imagine either one of them care very much about what narrative wins them power. I expect the democrats to drop the blue collar thing pretty soon, not because they’re going to change their mind, but because it’s seen by the general public as false. Nobody sees the democrats as in the corner of the common man. The democrats represent the PMC and fashionable identity politics causes (the kind that the PMC likes, rather than things that make life better for minorities). They represent the manicured hand of the upper classes who only see plebeians through the lenses of Noblesse Obliges. The right represents the blue collar workers.
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Trump as a caudillo is not a new comparison- it's just usually been democrats making it. Charismatic leader promising to set things right by rule through force of personality is kinda true.
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