What’s more, Argentina, on its own, is not in a position to undertake dollarization since for two simple reasons. As Alejandro Werner, former director of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told America Quarterly, “Argentina does not have the dollars to dollarize, and it does not have access to the financial market to obtain dollars.”…
But will Washington be prepared to pour significant funds into [Argentinian dollarization]; according to estimates from the Spanish financial daily Expansión, the initial outlay alone could cost as much as $100 billion, for a project that is likely to take years to complete, and what’s more with a government that still owes the IMF $44 billion as well as billions to China. And that is a lot of money to the Biden Administration, especially with Congress blanching at providing more funds for the Zelensky government in Ukraine.
Nah. Poppy Bush was a CIA creature. Obama was a CIA creature. Milei is some freakish hybrid of Birchers and Randroids. He doesn't understand how any of the machines of government keep his constituencies in a position to support him.
Gutting the Argentinian bank might be superficially awesome for the US (assuming you squint and convince yourself cheap Argentinian exports are what Americans really hunger for). But its going to completely fuck over the domestic bourgeois. You're going to have fascist riots under Milei inside two years, tops.
Its not just fascists, as American officials in Bolivia and Ecuador discovered.
But there is a real struggle between the core ideas of economic reform and social revolution, wherein folks who are comfortable but nervous despair at their future while folks who are desperate and ambitious seek to navigate an inevitable change on the horizon.
Its good for domestic billionaires, because it creates an export-oriented market that rewards denuding the local economy in exchange for an internationally recognized foreign currency.
But its awful for local business owners, landlords, and political families, who are still stuck servicing the enormous foreign debts on pain of losing their domestic assets to foreign creditors. Also awful for anyone with a large stash of Argentinian Pesos, or debts denominated in Pesos, because this will only accelerate devaluation of the old currency. In the short term, Milei's proposals are going to ramp up inflation, as people try to get their hands on dollars before the state stops recognizing pesos having any value at all.