Hacker News Reader

Comment by arb-spreads | Hacker News Reader

This has the potential to be extremely transformative for Argentina. The country struggled for decades with rampant inflation and incompetent leadership. Dollarizing the economy will offer the potential for Argentina to return to growth and offer a quality standard of living to tens of millions of Argentineans.

For reference - I was in Argentina earlier this year. The exchange rate was 400:1, relative to the dollar. Now each dollar is worth ~1000 pesos, after only a few months. A 30+ minute Uber was the equivalent of under 3 dollars.

View on HN

FYI, it's the black market exchange rate that's over 1000 pesos per dollar. The official, government rate is 350 pesos per dollar.

Just another way the government tries to make believe away the reality that the market discovers.

> ... and incompetent leadership

That is a very polite formulation for "corrupt politicians".

Javier Milei has close to 0 representation in any level of government apart from the executive: can you please explain how he is going to get literally anything done, let alone “offer a quality standard of living to tens of millions of Argentineans” ?

Use the bully pulpit and massive propaganda resources of the government to hammer his opposition. Use the levers of executive power to find ways to implement his agenda without the legislator, just as Biden does in the US with split congress. And finally caucus with the conservative parties who openly backed him.

> bully pulpit

That's the one thing that gives me hope in this.

His mandate is about the economy. Not social issues. He may rant about sex ed and libtards and all that, but everybody knows he was elected to fix hyperinflation. He and the more centrist parts of the government may be able compromise and come up with solutions for that.

> the levers of executive power

This is what I worry about. I don't know much about division of powers in AR, but anything he can do unilaterally will likely be batcrap like sabre-rattling at "communist" trading partners.

> incompetent leadership

I have bad news for you. They basically elected a right-wing shock-jock President. This is like if Americans elected Tucker Carlson. I mean, I get that Argentina couldn't survive another Peronist, but this is not better.

The final outcome could be okay if dollarization happens - I do agree with economists that dollarization would probably be good for AR... the rest of his other "platform" planks aren't so rosy, and MAGA extremists aren't known for restricting their scope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com