Monday, October 20, 2025

That Trick Works Every Time

I am not an expert on Argentinian voters, but I suspect this will not help Milei.
Hosting Milei at the White House last week, Trump threatened Argentinian voters with withdrawing aid if his ally was defeated at the ballot box.

“If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump said.
The election in question is for the legislation, not a re-elect for Milei. Earlier in the article:
Milei, once a global poster boy for budget-slashing libertarian politics, is heading into the polls diminished by his failure to stabilize the ailing peso, despite spending nearly all the Central Bank’s dollar reserves to prop it up.

Inflation, which Milei had initially managed to stem after taking office in December 2023, has been rising again month-on-month.
The problem with libertarianism is, quite literally, you eventually run out of your Central Bank's dollar reserves.

I dropped my monetary economics class in grad school, but I remember enough to know that trying to maintain a currency value with finite and limited dollar supplies wasn't going to work.