Disinflation on the Pampas, by Joel Bowman

In contrast to a short year ago, Argentinians are finding well-stocked store shelves. From Joel Bowman at joelbowman.substack.com:

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”

~ Ernest Hemingway, “Notes on the Next War,” Esquire magazine, September 1935

What a change a season makes…

A year ago, the long-suffering Argentine people stood at the crossroads of an historic election. Naturally skeptical, voters saw standing before them two candidates from the ghost of their country’s past, a couple of “known knowns.” 

On the “left” stood the serpentine incumbent, then Minister of the Economy Sergio Massa, who had carefully overseen the near obliteration of his people’s money, the peso. 

On the “right” was Patricia Bullrich, a stalwart of the conservative team, despised by pointy-headed liberals and tolerated by her own embattled party, mostly for want of a better option. 

Then there was the imminently unelectable Sr. Motosierra, Javier Milei, a lunatic with a chainsaw who promised to disembowel the Leviathan, burn the central bank to the ground, and generally unleash anarchy upon the End of the World… 

For many Argentines (including apparently slow-witted exiles who stubbornly call the place home), the elections looked by all accounts like another lost cause.

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