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Soriek  11mo ago (text post)   1872 thread views

Transnational Thursdays XXX

This is the thirtieth weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Many political observers underestimate how great the challenge is for Milei. $44bn owed to the IMF alone, $400bn overall, like $15bn maturing next year alone. Just to stay ahead of default will require being the best performing economy in the developed (air quotes optional) world under best-case global macroeconomic conditions. What makes Argentina so tough is that the pain of fiscal discipline would be (or will be) so substantial and so long-lasting that voters would have to reaffirm their commitment to it multiple times despite significant material declines in quality of life.

And it’s hard to understate that. I think a lot of Milei’s voters expect the liberalization efforts to yield short term economic improvements when in reality the opposite is likely.

There've already been large increases in meat prices and a devaluation of the peso by 50%, so you'd expect his popularity to crash fast if that's the case.

I am not sure if you know that, but the real peso value has barely budged. Nobody sane used the official currency exchange rate when having any chance to avoid it; this is probably the country with the highest black market currency exchange share, couriers developing piles of cash for USDT everywhere. Milei has simply forced compliance with reality.

Price hikes are real, though.

There’s a difference between a few months of pain and years of it, too. Their patience will need to be immense.

People are generally able to discern between the hardships of climbing a mountain and running in circle in a quagmire. Usually the direction the economy is moving to is what determines voters sentiment. Crash now and then steady improvement would yield good electoral outcomes.

Also while global interests are high right now - there is a lot of capital looking for investment - especially after the west is hell bent on sanctioning everyone. A business friendly Argentina is probably not a bad place to do investments in.

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