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Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

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Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#11

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

> 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out

Has there been study into whether this is Milei's policies' fault?

Argentina's default state is default. Milei inherited a mess. And of their top export categories--soybeans, oil and cars [1]--two are currently fucked. If another policy treatment would have resulted in similar outcomes due to these exogenous shocks and the starting conditions, it's unfair to damn Milei's ideology for what could be a failure to execute.

From what I've read, the currency pressure started "after a heavy defeat for President Javier Milei's party at the hands of the Peronist opposition in local elections" in Bueons Aires [2]. That loss, in turn, is blamed on "claims that" Milei's sister "and other close associates profited from a bribery scheme within the country’s disability agency" [3].

Put another way, the folks who support him are rallying behind corruption. That may be different from those who originally rallied behind his ideas.

[1] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/arg

[2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/argent...

[3] https://apnews.com/article/argentina-javier-milei-karina-mil...

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#12

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

I think Milei's policies were fine and the economy was turning around. He didn't make it worse, and it was heading for the right direction.

But (a big but) the series of scandals and corruptions have exhausted his political power. Before that people were willing to give him a chance. Now they don't want another corrupt politician.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#13

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

It's crashing because outside investors think Argentinians might be out to boot the libertarian out, not because libertarian policies don't work. The problem in Argentina is cultural and Milei is notable exactly because he's so rare there.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#14
post #7
post #2

$40b is $1000 per Argentine (pop 40m). I bet US soybean farmers would be happier to get that money themselves to offset their losses. But, of course, that money isn't going to Argentines directly, it is going to shore up US investors in Argentina, who just happen to be Trump buddies.

"Trump says he has final say on paying himself $230m for past investigations" (from US taxpayer money) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/22/donald-trump... Gee golly I'm starting to think this fella may just be a teensy bit corrupt

I'm not sure I'll ever get over the fact that so many people, including a surprisingly large number of people here, voted for and support this clearly inept, mean, clueless, inarticulate, sloppy, disgusting, empathy-lacking, greedy, corrupt, incompetent, evil, childish fool to lead them. How anyone cannot see who this man clearly is after minimal exposure is simply beyond me. I keep telling myself that his supporters are just fools because that is much more comforting than alternative explanations, primarily that they LIKE was he is doing, all of it. We can fix foolishness (education), but I'm not sure how we fix a populace which doesn't value democracy and enjoys watching innocent people suffer.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#15
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trump says he has final say on paying himself $230m for past investigations" (from US taxpayer money) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/22/donald-trump... Gee golly I'm starting to think this fella may just be a teensy bit corrupt

I'm not sure I'll ever get over the fact that so many people, including a surprisingly large number of people here, voted for and support this clearly inept, mean, clueless, inarticulate, sloppy, disgusting, empathy-lacking, greedy, corrupt, incompetent, evil, childish fool to lead them. How anyone cannot see who this man clearly is after minimal exposure is simply beyond me. I keep telling myself that his supporters…

I think many people are (perhaps subconsciously, it’s wrongthink these days) worried about the rapid demographic slide, and he’s the only guy to even pretend to want to do something about it. He also has a lot of other random opinions, which I think most people don’t care one way or another about as long as he pretends to deal with the thing they are subconsciously worried about (not that what he’s doing does anything meaningful in that regard, but the subconscious is not very good at math).

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'll ever get over the fact that so many people, including a surprisingly large number of people here, voted for and support this clearly inept, mean, clueless, inarticulate, sloppy, disgusting, empathy-lacking, greedy, corrupt, incompetent, evil, childish fool to lead them. How anyone cannot see who this man clearly is after minimal exposure is simply beyond me. I keep telling myself that his supporters…

I think many people are (perhaps subconsciously, it’s wrongthink these days) worried about the rapid demographic slide, and he’s the only guy to even pretend to want to do something about it. He also has a lot of other random opinions, which I think most people don’t care one way or another about as long as he pretends to deal with the thing they are subconsciously worried about (not that what he’s doing does anythin…

Sure, but the responsibility for this dynamic is still on them. They've been buying into this abjectly brain dead narrative about the cause of the demographic slide - blaming immigration instead of the looting elites who have been turning the financial screws of wealth extraction, making it ever-harder to have kids.

As women entered the workforce, the definition of full time employment hours should have halved, right? And failing that, people's saved wealth should have gone up such that they had more negotiating power with their employers and working hours naturally went down. Instead the looters turned up the financial treadmill of low interest rates, dumping all the gains from having double the workforce, plus technological progress, plus offshoring into an asset bubble to benefit the wealthy. This is precisely why "the rent is too damn high".

But still rather than coming to terms with how they've been continuously enabling this by supporting fake "fiscal responsibility" Republicans (Democrats would have still printed most of that new money but at least spread it around a bit), they're leaning right back into that broken immigration narrative like a child's fucking security blanket - always getting stuck focusing on individuals who are different and turning to personal hate, while never even perceiving the system that has been deliberately set up to screw them over.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people are (perhaps subconsciously, it’s wrongthink these days) worried about the rapid demographic slide, and he’s the only guy to even pretend to want to do something about it. He also has a lot of other random opinions, which I think most people don’t care one way or another about as long as he pretends to deal with the thing they are subconsciously worried about (not that what he’s doing does anythin…

Sure, but the responsibility for this dynamic is still on them. They've been buying into this abjectly brain dead narrative about the cause of the demographic slide - blaming immigration instead of the looting elites who have been turning the financial screws of wealth extraction, making it ever-harder to have kids. As women entered the workforce, the definition of full time employment hours should have halved, right…

The slide objectively is due to immigration, though. If you look at the demographics that were present prior to the massive immigration policy change in 1965, they are at about the same ratio as they were prior. Have you looked those up before, and do you disagree with that statement?

The looting stuff also happened, for sure, but in the counterfactual where the immigration policy hadn’t changed in the way that it did, we would be in a temporary and self correcting situation of “too many old people”, not in any permanent change demographically.

Now if we want to say that the people doing the looting are the same people who wanted the immigration policy changed, then yes I could see an argument where the looting is the root cause. But looting can be dealt with separately and it seems to be a much trickier problem as it’s more of a self interest vs society interest, prisoner’s dilemma, human nature type situation as opposed to a pretty simple and well defined problem on the other hand. Not that I think Trump is actually doing or will do anything significant about it, just that focusing on immigration isn’t that dumb in the abstract.

Now, we also do have a situation where it’s considered immoral to reject outsiders. So there is a subconscious temptation to route around immigration as the main problem, else one violates one’s own moral programming. I wonder if you could introspect to see if that’s happening on your end? Like rejecting outsiders has been normal human programming up until less than 100 years ago, the people who literally fought the Nazis would today be called Nazis for their mainstream-at-the-time views, etc. Something weird happened to morality…

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#18

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

> 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out Has there been study into whether this is Milei's policies' fault? Argentina's default state is default. Milei inherited a mess. And of their top export categories--soybeans, oil and cars [1]--two are currently fucked. If another policy treatment would have resulted in similar outcomes due to these exogenous s…

So the left is as fault when hes not in charge.

And the left is at fault when he is in charge.

At what point is he ever accountable for his actions?

He's been in power for years.

Also, the election of the other party only happened a few weeks ago...possibly in response to current government.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#19

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

I think Milei's policies were fine and the economy was turning around. He didn't make it worse, and it was heading for the right direction. But (a big but) the series of scandals and corruptions have exhausted his political power. Before that people were willing to give him a chance. Now they don't want another corrupt politician.

Bill Clinton had numerous scandals but his policies were sound and America balanced the deficit and jad a booming economy.

No this is solidly on terrible policy.

Re: Argentine peso hits fresh lows despite U.S. support – and it could get worse

#20
post #13

Remember when everyone on the right was really excited about Javier Milei, the libertarian prodigy who hated liberals and government with a passion? Remember he gave Elon a chainsaw? 2 years into his presidency and Argentina is crashing and burning and the US taxpayers have to bail it out. .

It's crashing because outside investors think Argentinians might be out to boot the libertarian out, not because libertarian policies don't work. The problem in Argentina is cultural and Milei is notable exactly because he's so rare there.

So the economy is crashing currency is worthless after 2 years if Milei and its still the lefts fault?
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