by Mark Harvey

“It is not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance.” ―Lawrence Thornton, Imagining Argentina

Watching the recent elections in Argentina makes an arm-chair economist like me face-palm myself. The country that was once one the richest in the world, the country that has an embarrassingly large assortment of riches—wheat, oil, soybeans, cattle, olives, grapes, minerals and the like–can’t get out of its own way when it comes to retaking its place as a wealthy nation.

In November, Argentina elected Javier Milei, the self-described anarcho-capitalist, as its new president. Milei has a little of everything—a dash of Brazil’s ex-president Bolsonaro, a dash of Trump, and a dash of Elon Musk. He’s like one of those fruitcakes passed around at Christmas with all the colorful little radioactive bits that you can’t quite identify.

Milei was a blasphemous candidate, calling Pope Francis—himself an Argentine– an hijo de puta (son of a bitch), calling the president of Brazil (Argentina’s second biggest trading partner) a corrupt communist and even taking a shot at Micky Mouse, comparing him “…to every Argentine politician because he is a disgusting rodent whom everybody loves.” He’s also a climate-change denier who believes the sale of human organs should be legal and even dithers on the sale of children, saying that it’s essentially context-dependent. Read more »