Ben Norton@BenjaminNorton
Javier Milei's libertarian, "anarcho-capitalist" project keeps failing in Argentina.
The economy is shrinking, just a few months after a massive bailout with tens of billions of dollars from the US government and IMF.
Argentina is de-industrializing rapidly. Local manufacturing is being devastated by Milei's "free market" shock therapy. (This was entirely predictable, because this is exactly what happened with the US-mandated imposition of neoliberal reforms across South America in the "lost decade" of the 1980s, which caused extreme de-industrialization.)
The only sectors that are growing in Argentina are the parasitic extractive ones:
- monoculture agriculture exports, by big oligarch landlords;
- mining, by multinational corporations; and
- finance, driven by speculation and foreign "hot money", which often flows out of the country in rapid capital flight when foreign investors get scared.
Milei's actually existing libertarianism is simply turning Argentina into a resource colony for foreign capitalists. (And this is not even to mention Milei's Made in USA foreign policy and his total political subjugation of his country to the White House.)
Link: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…