Argentine President Milei Revels in his Country’s Destruction
On the morning of Sept. 23, Argentina’s self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milei stood at the podium of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street to manically ring the bell opening that day’s trading session. Just before this, he had met with a group of New York City investors to vow he will intensify the Malthusian policies he has imposed since his inauguration last December, which are depopulating and deindustrializing a country with the highest literacy rate in Ibero-America, a highly-skilled workforce and a world renowned scientific and technological infrastructure.
His focus, he proclaimed, will be on lowering inflation, reducing the fiscal deficit (a key IMF demand), and ultimately achieving a “zero deficit,” — all at the expense of the country’s productive activities and the population’s living standards. Had Argentina joined the BRICS on Jan. 1, 2024, after it was invited to do so during the Aug. 22-24, 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, it would have had an opportunity to begin to emerge from its debt and economic crisis, through new economic cooperation agreements, financing through the BRICS New Development Bank, opening new markets, etc
President Milei rejected the invitation, aligned instead with Washington, Tel Aviv and NATO and violently imposed the anti-human economic policies of the “Austrian School” of Friedrich von Hayek. Poverty in the country is close to 60%, up from 44% when Milei took office. For the first quarter of 2024, UNICEF forecast that childhood poverty in Argentina would reach 70%, up from 57% in the last quarter of 2023. Milei also punished retirees, vetoing a bill that would have increased their pensions. Government policies have caused the shutdown of more than 10,000 small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the closure of all state-run infrastructure projects, and a wholesale assault on the nuclear energy program.
A longtime close friend of the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization reported on Sept. 9 that the Argentine government “is finished, at war with its own people.” Milei is “desperate,” he continued, unable to obtain financing from any foreign financial institution, including the IMF, and possessing only a dwindling supply of dollars. In the nine months of his government, he continued, the Libertarian President has shown his hatred for human beings. In the name of “freedom,” he has slashed the budgets of every state-run agency or institution that protects pensions, healthcare, education and workers’ rights.
That Milei would target the nuclear industry, which Argentines consider a matter of national sovereignty, is coherent with his vicious outlook. In early September, authorities at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) announced the shutdown of the CAREM-25, a small, modular 25 MW nuclear reactor, whose prototype was scheduled to be completed between 2028 and 2030. Almost 85% complete, CAREM is a source of enormous pride for the nuclear program because is it designed and built with 100% Argentine technology and held great potential as an export to other developing countries. Milei is also said to be contemplating privatizing Argentina’s three existing nuclear reactors.
