Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president

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BUENOS AIRES, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Argentina elected libertarian outsider Javier Milei as its new president on Sunday, rolling the dice on an outsider with radical views to fix an economy battered by triple-digit inflation, a looming recession and rising poverty.

Official results have not been released, but his rival, Peronist Economy Minister Sergio Massa, conceded in a speech. His candidacy was hampered by the country's worst economic crisis in two decades while he has been at the helm.


Milei is pledging economic shock therapy. His plans include shutting the central bank, ditching the peso, and slashing spending, potentially painful reforms that resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise, but sparked fears of austerity in others.

"Milei is the new thing, he's a bit of an unknown and it is a little scary, but it's time to turn over a new page," said 31-year-old restaurant worker Cristian as he voted on Sunday.


But Milei's challenges are enormous. He will have to deal with the empty coffers of the government and central bank, a creaking $44 billion debt program with the International Monetary Fund, inflation nearing 150% and a dizzying array of capital controls.

With many Argentines not fully convinced by either candidate, some had characterized the vote as a choice of the "lesser evil": fear of Milei's painful economic medicine versus anger at Massa and his Peronist party for an economic crisis that has left Argentina deeply in debt and unable to tap global credit markets.


Milei has been particularly popular among the young, who have grown up seeing their country lurch from one crisis to another.

"Our generation is pushing the presidency of Milei to stop our country being a pariah," said Agustina Lista, 22, a student in Buenos Aires.

Milei's win shakes up Argentina's political landscape and economic roadmap, and could impact trade in grains, lithium and hydrocarbons. Milei has criticized China and Brazil, saying he won't deal with "communists," and favors stronger U.S. ties.

The shock rise of the 53-year-old economist and former TV pundit has been the story of the election, breaking the hegemony of the two main political forces on the left and the right - the Peronists and the main Together for Change conservative bloc.

"The election marks a profound rupture in the system of political representation in Argentina," said Julio Burdman, director of the consultancy Observatorio Electoral, ahead of the vote.

Supporters of Massa, 51, an experienced political wheeler-dealer, had sought to appeal to voter fears about Milei's volatile character and "chainsaw" plan to cut back the size of the state.

"Milei's policies scare me," teacher Susana Martinez, 42, said on Sunday after she voted for Massa.

Milei is also staunchly anti-abortion, favors looser gun laws and has called Argentine Pope Francis a socialist "son of a bitch". He used to carry a chainsaw in a symbol of his planned cuts but shelved it in recent weeks to help boost his moderate image.

After October's first-round vote, Milei struck an uneasy alliance with the conservatives, which boosted his support. But he faces a highly fragmented Congress, with no single bloc having a majority, meaning that he will need to get backing from other factions to push through legislation. Milei's coalition also does not have any regional governors or mayors.

That may temper some of his more radical proposals. Long-suffering voters are likely to have little patience, and the threat of social unrest is never far below the surface.

His backers say only he can uproot the political status quo and economic malaise that has dogged South America's second-largest economy for years.

"Milei is the only viable option so we do not end up in misery," said Santiago Neria, a 34-year-old accountant.

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In a unsurprising turns of events, Petro (Colombia's current president, cringe leftist) decides to seethe on Twitter while responding to Duque congratulating Milei (Colombia last president, right winger), he has done that everytime the left loses an election in Latin America (translation is provided in the screenshot)
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and Then Bukele (Salvador current President, extremely based) decides to BTFO him.
:story:

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I am glad that Bukele is shitposting on Twitter and mocking the far left loon.
 
  • Autistic
Reactions: Extreme Crusader
So, the decision to just abandon their currency and use USD instead is brave but probably the right thing to do.
Allow me to let you in on the biggest secret people who don't live here don't know.

We already have a dolarized economy, it's just "on the downlow".

If you want to buy property, ANY property? you'll be paying that in USD, tech in USD (even small potato shit like a video card any retailer will take USD out of your hands over shitty pesos, let alone industrial machines, they don't even take pesos for those), rent for tourists spots? USD, contracts for any high paying job? USD pesified on the day of the payout (and even this is negotiable), cars? same deal as tech.

Pesos are only good for grocery shopping and everyday expenses, anyone who takes them will either swap them to any foreign currency, crypto (you unironically risk losing less value by buying the somewhat established crypto), precious metals or immediately spend it on something else, holding onto them is insane, so much so that people joke that the only way to "save" in pesos is to hoard the small value coins because those at least retain their melt value.

As for our black pilled frens, I would like to invite you to do a month-long experiment, you can consider it adventure tourism if you will, I would like you to get on a plane to Buenos Aires, rent a hostel room, and live that entire month with only 100 USD, while the minimal salary is a bit over that I'm setting you to 100 due to "rent" (we're exchanging normal rent with your hotel room even if the hotel costs more, and services you'd have to pay like power, gas, etc.), and I want you to immediately take those 100 USD and exchange them to pesos at the highest rate you can find.

If you end up having to draw more, I want you to note it down with day, date, reason and amount.

If you end up having leftovers, I would like to congratulate you on surviving the argie economy, will provide a complimentary t-shirt about it and would like you to mention how much you had left and calculate how long it would take for you to buy anything meaningful by saving that much per month.

Hope you have a great time,just remember to spend those extra dollaridoos in traveller health insurance, you're gonna need it.
 
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Guy is an honest to god wild card, closest to a "Trump" figure in pure no fucks given energy (from what I understand he was also a celebrity in Argentina as a football player and a musician, not just for his economy takes). He does seem like an obscene kike lover, but he's also the most "classic liberal" I've ever seen in my life take power.

I'd like to believe he'll at a minimum generate mayhem and if allowed to do his thing, maybe Argentinians can live with an economy that isn't a perpetual clown circus. Sadly, what I expect from him is that he will try and do shit, get constantly cockblocked by pure bureaucracy, then 4 years will have passed on "oh wait, my life wasn't changed, let me elect a commie again".
 
I give it about 2 months of honeymoon before he starts mass importing niggers.
We can mass import even more niggers than what having full open borders with all of South America,a full blown gibsmedat system, socialized everything paid for by taxes even if you're a foreigner and a justice system that looks the other way for every single crime a "latin american brother" commits can get you?
 
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What makes him degenerate? He’s very anti-abortion and anti-gay.

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He's not against those things. He's against those things personally, which is a different issue.

He doesn't like abortion for two reasons: he thinks is wrong as a libertarian, he thinks the state shouldn't pay for them. But he's said he will let people vote for it. Meaning, if Argentina votes for abortion, he's gonna say "well, I guess that's fine: have your abortion, but with your money, not mine even though I don't like it."

Trump ran on an anti-abortion campagin because he's against abortion and he made sure to make a SC that would abolish Roe. Meaning, he used the powers of the state to change a reality of America that he personally felt it was inmoral and hurtful. Milei's not doing that. He's doing the old "do whatever you want as long as it's not with my money".

That's what he's saying about sex work here, and many other things. He's fine with people being degenerate as long as the state doesn't pay for it. Which means that, even if Argentina actually manages to save their economy, no real improvement will be made as progressive will still be rampant. He's cutting them money, not cutting them.
 
To all the glowies here: do not fuck this up, do not support another banana republic opposition just because of bad optics like bolsonaro, we can't afford more commies down south. All the other big countries in the region, mexico, chile, brazil, colombia, have gone commie. This is the second biggest country there, we need them on our side or else the entire region is gone.

Trump completely broke the American establishment. They can only parse the world now in terms of Trump/anti-Trump, to the point where they make massive strategic self-owns (like supporting Lula in Brazil) solely because the other guy seems kinda Trump-like.

That's how we ended with lula in brazil, petro in colombia, amlo in mexico and boric in chile. The only people over there who believe in this "progressive" (if you can call it progress) shit plain HATE our asses, I saw it at every place I went. They blame us for everything, even the shit they did to themselves and specially the shit their previous commie governments did, because we somehow sabotaged their plan of doing retarded shit and expecting good results.

Just one more data point against American elites being super-masterminds. They've spent decades promoting the message that America sucks, that we were born in blood, white man le bad, Christianity le bad, etc, but think this unprincipled rider, "except when the Pentagon wants something," is going to have any traction overseas. And then they are shocked when they back a foreign government that echoes all the same anti-America propaganda doesn't give a shit about what the Pentagon wants and, in fact, makes overtly anti-American foreign policy moves. Like everyone else around the world is supposed to understand that the anti-America agitprop really comes with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge that it only applies to our heritage people and culture, not the liberal government.

Trump ran on an anti-abortion campagin because he's against abortion and he made sure to make a SC that would abolish Roe.

Trump ran on pro-life because it's what the people whose votes he needed wanted, and he delivered because he never quite understood that the core value of the Republican Party is fucking over your voters once you get elected, making up excuses for why they can't have what they want, and starting a war somewhere instead.
 
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He's not against those things. He's against those things personally, which is a different issue.

He doesn't like abortion for two reasons: he thinks is wrong as a libertarian, he thinks the state shouldn't pay for them. But he's said he will let people vote for it. Meaning, if Argentina votes for abortion, he's gonna say "well, I guess that's fine: have your abortion, but with your money, not mine even though I don't like it."

Trump ran on an anti-abortion campagin because he's against abortion and he made sure to make a SC that would abolish Roe. Meaning, he used the powers of the state to change a reality of America that he personally felt it was inmoral and hurtful. Milei's not doing that. He's doing the old "do whatever you want as long as it's not with my money".

That's what he's saying about sex work here, and many other things. He's fine with people being degenerate as long as the state doesn't pay for it. Which means that, even if Argentina actually manages to save their economy, no real improvement will be made as progressive will still be rampant. He's cutting them money, not cutting them.
If people won't control themselves they'll ruin shit anyway, better to not waste money trying to prevent or ameliorate the inevitable
 
anybody here actually live in Argentina?
I do, I was also a table president in the elections (which means I was in charge of my voting table) something that I did to help prevent fraud.
There are many things to address both in the posts in this thread and the article, this is a TL;DR but it's worth reading if you care:

1-Replies in the thread: ¿Will he make the US dollar the official currency of the country?

No, he is gonna close the central bank to abolish the peso and go for a free market of currencies, you can do business with whatever you want, there won't be legal tender, he will acquire the US dollars needed for this by selling bonds that we owe to ourselves, then use that to cancel the central bank debt and buy the pesos in the street (our federal government owes money to the central bank, we are merely changing who we owe money too in exchange for money, like buying a bond) I talked about this more in depth in this post: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/far-r...nas-presidential-primary.169759/post-16639897
Read this later, it's not as important.

2- Article: "Milei's win shakes up Argentina's political landscape and economic roadmap, and could impact trade in grains, lithium and hydrocarbons. Milei has criticized China and Brazil, saying he won't deal with "communists," and favors stronger U.S. ties."

Milei never said he will stop trading with other countries, he said he won't have diplomatic ties with them anymore, which means no longer letting the Chinese establish military bases in our country for example.

3- Article: "His candidacy (Massa) was hampered by the country's worst economic crisis in two decades while he has been at the helm."

A crisis that they caused, the exchange rate of the Argentinian peso with the US dollar was 60 to 1 when this government started 4 years ago and now it's 950 to 1 (and it got to 1100 to 1 just a month ago).
The article says that there is a crisis, but ignores that they themselves caused it, Massa also became the Minister of Economics a few months before running for president in order to have the power to give away as much money as he can so he can win the elections, which is too long to explain here.

4- Article: "But he faces a highly fragmented Congress, with no single bloc having a majority, meaning that he will need to get backing from other factions to push through legislation.Milei's coalition also does not have any regional governors or mayors."

That is because our system allows the states to have elections at different times than the presidential elections, therefore all states did that in order to avoid Milei's votes, we vote with a paper ballot that has all the candidates of a political party and this ballot can be cut to allow you to vote for a particular political party only in one position (such as president, governor, etc.) they knew that everyone would put the entire Milei ballot in the voting envelopes if the presidential and state elections were done at the same time, it's a manipulative move, if that had not happened Milei would have the majority of government everywhere, I know this because as a table president I was in charge of counting the votes, in the primaries and the first round the majority of people put the entire ballot in the envelope (which means they vote for all the candidates in the political party), funnily enough when people cut the ballot to vote for a particular presidential candidate no one did it with Massa, almost all did it for Milei.

5- Article: "Long-suffering voters are likely to have little patience, and the threat of social unrest is never far below the surface."

Only leftists riot (which is going to happen as soon as Milei is in power), we had riots during 2001 and people talk about the "social explosion" we had during those days, yet what really happened is that leftists rioted to remove who was in power at the time in order to have someone new in place, people don't loot due to not having enough money to eat, our economical situation is far worse than during 2001 yet no riots have occurred, this is because we had 16 years of Peronists in power so the same people doing the rioting are the ones in government, it makes no sense to riot, leftists always create destruction and then blame that destruction on "the system" in order to establish socialism, leftists know that if society is working perfectly then socialism has no appeal, which is why they must destroy it as much as possible in order to blame "capitalism" or some shit and propose more government as a solution to the destruction that they themselves caused, as soon as Milei gets in government leftists will start rioting, looting supermarkets and stores, they will burn shit down and a few of them will be killed, which will then be portrayed as le evil right winger destroying the country with "austerity" and the "people" rebelling against him just like it happened in Chile when the government raised the price of the subway ticket by 4 cents. (I will explain now how this "austerity" fear is bullshit).


6- Article: "potentially painful reforms that resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise, but sparked fears of austerity in others."

Milei said 800 times how he is gonna cut public spending, he is gonna change the way in which government infrastructure is built so it costs much less money and there is no more corruption, the "inefficiency of public spending"(corruption) in Argentina is 7.2% of the GDP compared to 1.8% of the GDP in Chile, this means that an absurd amount of money is stolen due to the way things are done, there is also 148 taxes in Argentina yet only 10 of those collect 90% of the taxes, the rest are there for corruption purposes (give me money and you don't pay taxes).
Milei won't destroy schools or hospitals to cut government spending, he will also cut the money that the federal government sends to the states, this is because the federal government uses that money to inflate the treasury of states in which they have the majority in order to win more elections, he also wants to eliminate subsidies by changing the contracts with companies that provide services such as electricity, giving them other benefits in exchange of not raising prices so much (such as allowing them to reinvest without paying taxes, giving them longer duration contracts, etc.)
These things alone are 10% of the GDP (not of the state expenses, of the GDP). To give an example, the US government uses 9.4 trillion a year, if you cut 10% of the GDP in government expenses then that means you cut 2.54 trillion in government spending, our economy is much smaller of course, but I'm saying this to explain how much he plans on cutting without doing anything that affects me or anyone negatively.

Another point that is not part of that 10% of the GDP is selling state owned companies that lose money, these lose hundreds of millions a year (like our airlines that are filled with corrupt politically adjacent people for corruption purpose) this is a lot of money in a poor and small country like ours, and not only they lose money, but because the government acquired them in shady ways (by force and not paying what they were truly valued at) we lost international trials in which we have to pay billions, around 14 billion in our oil company called YPF that was acquired in 2012.
In summary:
-Milei is gonna cut expenses by preventing government corruption with infrastructure spending.
-He is gonna take away subsidies by changing contracts so the prices don't rise.
-He is gonna take away money the federal government sends to states that are part of the same political party as the president.
-He will sell state owned companies that lose money.
-None of this affects anyone in a negative way unless you are a politician or politically adjacent person.


This article is pure shit, thanks for reading and as Javier says "viva la libertad carajo!"
 
The database applies to people who have either been imprisoned or have an order for their capture, something you conveniently didn't highlight.

Letting people under 18 go to jail is fine by me, country has a problem with kids 14-18 murdering people and walking out.

Making justice be quicker is fine by me, country has a problem with judges who blame "society" and drag out causes indefinitely for nigger criminals, or drag them out forever for major corrupt criminals.

The jail system is cited as an hybrid system, again, funny you left that out.

The "forced labor" bit also has an addendum to "they'll have to work OR study to sustain themselves and help in their reinsertion in society", again, funny you choose to limit the highlight just to "forced labor" and ignored the rest of the context, the rest of the context being that they'll remove salaries for imprisoned people and they will only receive them IF they work and/or study (you know, the first two lines in that item).

Militarization of institutions is meant to imply that the party will heavily control how it works, it has to do with "militancia" or "political militant", not military, something you'd know if you weren't using google translate.

All in all, you're leaving out context because you're some propagandist faggot using google translate, thinking you're clever hiding behind a language barrier and pretending you understand anything about a country you heard about a week ago.
 
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He will cuck out pretty quickly.
There is no way the Argentinian economy will survive after he severs ties with China, Russia and Brazil. Severing ties with countries due to ideological differences is absurdly autistic, not even Bolsonaro who won't stop sperging about muh commies dared to cut ties with China.

Besides, in every “democratic” country the script is always the same.
The President promises heaven on earth, and in less than 6 months the President cucks out and does the total opposite without having any responsibility. The President loses supporters, throws own allies under the bus, scares moderates away from them, and the only people who are now left are schizophrenic telegram boomers and reactionary teenagers who aren't able to vote.
Oh, and they always run away to somewhere else (mainly Florida) with bank accounts full of that sweet USD money in offshore accounts, even in defeat they're still victorious in comparison to the average citizen. It can be Latin America, North America, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe or whatever.
It's always the same shit, the population is constantly blueballed.
 
See you 18 months.
Stay mad chink, you don't know shit, never will.
He will cuck out pretty quickly.
There is no way the Argentinian economy will survive after he severs ties with China, Russia and Brazil. Severing ties with countries due to ideological differences is absurdly autistic, not even Bolsonaro who won't stop sperging about muh commies dared to cut ties with China.
Absolutely agree he's not going to cut ties with those three, at most make any and all agreements skewed towards benefiting Argentina (insert optimistic rainbow here) instead of letting shit happen like the chinks overfishing our waters and paying $3.50 to some politician to do so.

No more utter horseshit like the Yuan-Peso swap tough, that's for certain.
This is bad, you gotta have trains.
He kind of walked this one back, but I suppose I should further elaborate on how the public transport system works here for the sake of clarity. (though, you probably have a fairly solid idea, if anything I'll elaborate for the rest of the thread too)

Before that I'll tl;dr how/why he walked it back, when confronted with the other candidate about how bus fare would go up by 1400%, he said that was bullshit and at most the hike would be from $59 to $200 (which is from 5 fucking cents to 20 in USD), that price would still make it so the populace would not pay full fare.

Now for the rest of the sperging:

Public transport (trains, buses) have been state funded for a while, the problem comes that it's less of a full on public system and more of an hybrid one, let's put one bus line as example, the almost meme worthy "60" line (it's a bit of a meme that it has enough variations to carry you anywhere you might go, even off planet).

So, the company that runs the line number 60 of buses is given a concession to run it from the state, and then with this is also given money to keep it going, so far so good, right?

The problem comes that when you also have a defunded and broken state which prints money to devaluate and liquidate debt, these public transport companies are put between a rock and a hard place as they are not allowed to freely modify their tariffs due to the terms of the concession given.

So the bus driver that earned let's say, $100 has negotiated with their union that they want a 50% increase, let's say mechanics and others do so aswell and now your operating costs went up by 50% (super simplified, I know), however the subsidies granted by the state are not going to increase by 50% to cover these costs, nor will they allow you to increase the fees you charge to be able to keep operating.

All of this causes an economic spiraling down where you are essentially paying everything with printed money, which causes any and all costs associated to similar companies to go up because inflation, and since there's hardly any true value makers in the state due to typical banana republic rampant corruption the only way to pay those debts is to further print money, it's the equivalent of taking credit card debt to pay your credit card debt, you're making a giant snowball

What ends up happening is that the company has to provide a worse service, fire workers, etc.; full on privatization of public transport would be utterly retarded in the current context of the country as workers need it to get to work and produce (and they sure as shit cannot afford to full brunt of the cost), but on the other hand you can't have a system where with 140% yearly inflation the state will only allow you to raise fees by 20% yearly and then not cover the extra costs.

All in all it'd be a bad idea to go balls deep into privatizing transport of all things, but the current system is most definitely untenable without some serious changes to it.
 
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