I had to duck out this morning, just to check that the sun hadn’t turned to sackcloth or the moon to blood. But even those would have been secondary portents to the shattering miracle that really did occur.
The ABC ran an entire article on Javier Milei without using the f-word. You know: “far-right”. They even described Jair Bolsonaro as merely “right-wing”.
I’ll give you a few minutes to pick yourselves up from the floor. No doubt you’re as astonished as I was.
Now you’ve fanned yourselves a bit, read on, for what is, astonishingly, a reasonably balanced assessment.
Argentina libertarian economist Javier Milei has taken office, warning in his maiden speech that he has no alternative but to implement a sharp, painful fiscal shock to fix the country’s worst economic crisis in decades that includes inflation heading towards 200 per cent.
“There is no alternative to a shock adjustment,” he said on the steps of congress after taking the presidential baton and sash, with crowds of supporters cheering despite Mr Milei saying the economy would worsen in the short term.
“There is no money.”
As former PM Scott Morrison responded to PM Anthony Albanese’s blatherskiting, during the last election campaign, about Labor’s “big ideas”: “Yes, and then the next Coalition government has to figure out how to pay for it all”. Looking at the spiralling costs of gigantic Labor boondoggles like “Net Zero” and the NDIS (on track to become the single biggest budget Gargantua of them all), for once Morrison was onto something.
He is taking over from Peronist leader Alberto Fernandez, whose government was dogged by failures to rein in soaring prices.
“The outgoing government has left us on track towards hyperinflation,” Mr Milei said.
“We are going to do everything we can to avoid such a catastrophe.”
While the speech was light on details, he said key steps would include a fiscal adjustment equivalent to 5 per cent of the country’s GDP through cuts that he said would fall on “the state and not the private sector”.
Milei is in the same unenviable position as Jeff Kennett: having to fix decades of left-wing spendthrifting. Similarly, Tony Abbott gets little credit, as Howard-era Health Minister, for literally saving Medicare from out-of-control Labor policy.
The wild-haired outsider marks a major gamble for Argentina: His shock therapy economic plan of sharp spending cuts has gone down well with investors and could stabilise the embattled economy, but it risks pushing more people into hardship, with more than two-fifths of the population already in poverty.
To their credit, Argentinians seem to have twigged that they cannot simply vote themselves money forever.
However, voters — who drove Mr Milei to victory in a November run-off against a ruling Peronist coalition candidate — have said they are willing to roll the dice on his sometimes radical ideas that include shutting the central bank and dollarising.
“He is the last hope we have left,” said 72-year-old doctor Marcelo Altamira, who slammed “useless and inept” governments for years of boom-bust economic crises.
The outgoing Peronist government, Mr Altamira said, “had destroyed the country”.
If only voters in other Western countries would get the memo.
The challenges are huge. Argentina’s net foreign currency reserves are estimated at $US10 billion in the red, annual inflation is 143 per cent and rising, and a recession is around the corner and capital controls skew the exchange rate.
Argentina has gone through boom-bust cycles for decades with money printing to fund regular deficits stoking inflation and weakening the peso.
That has worsened in recent years as reserves have dwindled with a major drought earlier this year, hitting main cash crops soy and corn.
If not tamed, inflation could reach 15,000 per cent annually, Mr Milei warned in his speech, pledging to “fight tooth and nail” to eradicate it.
Mr Milei also warned about a $US100 billion ($152 billion) debt “bomb”.
ABC Australia
Sounds like the end result of every Labor government in Australia.
As for the ABC, no doubt management will send a stern memo to whoever was responsible for this outbreak of balanced reporting.
