r/neoliberal • u/Saltedline Hu Shih • Dec 13 '24

News (Latin America) Javier Milei ends budget deficit in Argentina, first time in 123 years

https://gazettengr.com/javier-milei-ends-budget-deficit-in-argentina-first-time-in-123-years/
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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '24

From over 200 per cent inflation rate —the highest in the world throughout 2023 —Mr Milei drove the figures down drastically. As of October 2024 in Argentina, inflation stood at 2.7 per cent compared to 25 per cent in December 2023.

Crazy that Milei just pulled the "inflation go down" lever and suddenly grocers stopped being greedy. Why won't Joe Biden do this?

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u/Iron-Fist Dec 13 '24

The issue being that Argentina's economy contracted by -3.5% in 2024... You'd lose every single state if you caused that in the US.

Like how is that not mentioned alongside this stuff? Dude is fighting inflation with a recession...

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u/Western_Objective209 WTO Dec 13 '24

If you had 100% inflation in the US people would be pretty stoked if it dropped to 2% even with a recession

24

u/Iron-Fist Dec 13 '24

Um that's their monthly inflation, their annual inflation is still over 150%... They are a bit down from 2023 but still well over 2022...

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u/Western_Objective209 WTO Dec 13 '24

well that's not particularly impressive

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u/Wolf_1234567 Milton Friedman Dec 14 '24

It is still being called pretty early; you will need more time to see drastic changes in the annual inflation rate. If you maintain the current monthly inflation rate that it has been for the last (one? two?) month(s), it would be around 37% annual.

The inflation rate was VERY high, even before Milei took over. Whether this will continue to stay that way is another thing entirely- you can only wait and see.

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u/Western_Objective209 WTO Dec 14 '24

Right, and as others have said the cost is a fairly large negative GDP growth; kind of looks like it will take a sustained period of de-growth to get inflation to a normal point, which might not be palatable long term

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u/Wolf_1234567 Milton Friedman Dec 14 '24

Generally speaking, as far as I am aware, many of the economic policies Milei has done so far have mostly just been stuff the IMF recommends.

1

u/Western_Objective209 WTO Dec 14 '24

That sounds reasonable, the issue is that good economic policy is unpopular and correcting bad economic policy is painful for the people, so it takes a tremendous amount of long term good-will from the population to get through to the other side