Am I crazy, or does this read like a litany of ways in which residents are worse-off after Milei's victory, concluding with "it looks like they're on a strong path to recovery"?
The picture in Argentina was not rosy before Milei took office, it was a country on the verge of hyperinflationary collapse, with a population declining through emigration, a largely informal economy in decline, and people struggling to keep up with dramatic inflation.
I don’t know of another case where hyperinflation was arrested without introducing a new currency. Milei has apparently done it by simply cutting spending, which naturally comes with some pain as the subsidies and government employment are curtailed, but a sound currency sets the stage for distributed investment, lending, entrepreneurship and growth.
More recent policy changes have focused on opening up the country to exports and imports, which will be key to bringing about prosperity through growth in industry, and bringing prices into line with international norms. https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/javier-milei-d...
This might be a valid observation in most other countries, but Argentina has been a basket case for ages. It’s defaulted nine times in a little over 200 years, and two of those defaults were in 2014 and 2020. I think this is one of those cases where you might could attribute a dramatic one or two year turnaround to the person actually doing something new (spending less).
The most prominent crashes I can remember are in the late 90s/early 2000s and the current one.
I'm just commenting on this specific article, in which the author repeatedly makes firsthand contact with the immediate outcomes of Milei's policies, finds them to be generally bad, and concludes that the experience is evidence that things are going well.
But the real issue is, the "oficial" dollar rate is controlled by Central Bank, and it won't be for long. When, as he promised, he let the peso float totally free, we'll really know even if the inflation can continue at 30% yearly.
Let alone, together with this, the growth of this year, that will likely pressure the inflation. They managed to reduce the inflation to 2.7% monthly, while the country was in a 3% GDP recession.
They're more likely to understand how they're better off than a tourist, or someone reading what a tourist wrote.