Last week Argentina’s Javier Milei regime tried to roll over bonds by offering investors an insane 69% interest rate, and only succeeded in rolling over 61% of them. Even a 69% annual interest rate isn’t enough to tempt investors to risk lending to the Milei ponzi, which means they either expect a default very soon, or they expect price inflation to exceed 69% over the next year. This was an ice-cold bucket of reality poured on the delusional talk of an economic miracle by the clown who plays a free market economist on TV and has been placed in the presidency to revive Argentina’s largest industry: sovereign bond pump-and-dumps.
Even if the bond auction had succeeded, it is difficult to see how Argentina could possibly avoid default and/or very high inflation in the rest of Milei’s term. According to Grok, Claude, ChatGPT, and basic common sense, no country has ever offered a yield higher than 30% on its bonds and avoided default, hyperinflation, or an IMF bail-out within the next three years. Failing to sell a bond at more than double that yield means the writing is on the wall, and you can safely ignore the media hype about an ‘economic miracle’. As I discussed last year,[1] Milei is just another inflationist president, and the inevitable consequences are rearing their ugly head.
During his first year in office, Milei used his free marketeer TV routine to pretend to bring economic freedom to the Argentine economy, but reneged on his campaign promise to shut down the central bank, and instead went about attempting to save it by adding its debt to the government’s debt; reneged on his promise to fight inflation by doubling or tripling money supply measures; reneged on his promise to not raise taxes; sought an IMF bail-out; and hired the same J.P. Morgan bankers, who had entrapped Argentina into tens of billions of dollars of debt, to head the most important positions in his administration and central bank. Old habits die hard, and all of the free market bluster on the campaign trail gave way to the same old fiat banksterism.
In his second year, as the peso continued to decline and his international reserves refused to recover, Milei cried and begged and brown-nosed his way to getting an IMF bail-out, as his talk of pivoting away from China and hysterically crying in Netanyahu’s arms seem to have succeeded in getting the IMF to unreasonably accommodate him[2]. In all the history of the IMF, its loans have always been the last resort of failed governments, an admission of economic failure, and a pawning of national sovereignty and future generations’ wealth in search of a few quick bucks to help failed leaders stay in power. But Milei and his bankster buddies have hilariously and shamelessly treated the new IMF loan like a triumph, with Luis Caputo giving a speech thanking his wife and children for their support during the negotiations, like he was winning an Oscar, when he had just succeeded in saddling generations of Argentines with USD debt.[3] I don’t recall seeing any government celebrating an IMF loan like this before.
With this new $20b in IMF loans, Argentina now has the highest outstanding debt to the IMF in IMF history. Argentina’s borrowing is now at 1,352% of its IMF quota, the highest excess over quota in IMF history. High-ranking IMF officials resigned, were fired, or refused to green-light this reckless loan that contravenes even the IMF’s own recklessly low standards.[4] The IMF’s own report on the debt practically acknowledged that the country’s debt is unrepayable.[5] Argentina’s loans now likely constitute more than 40% of the IMF’s entire lending portfolio! It’s fair to say at this point that the IMF primarily exists to lend to Argentina, thanks to the endless supply of Argentine scammers willing to pawn off their future generations’ wealth. But it doesn’t just stop at the IMF! Milei has also borrowed another $12 billion from the World Bank (WB), and $10 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), for a total of $42 billion borrowed from international institutions to add to the already enormous public debt. The cost of servicing this and the existing debt is enormous, and makes all adjustments to the budget inconsequential. And the cherry on top: Milei shipped off the little that remained of Argentina’s once significant gold reserves to London in search for a quick yield buck.
So what has this extreme inflation and indebtedness gotten Argentina exactly? If you read the economically illiterate international financial press[6], then Milei has presided over a supposed economic miracle because GDP growth has rebounded, while inflation and poverty have declined, and the budget has been balanced. This is nonsense, and the fact that it is being promoted so heavily speaks volumes about the role that the international financial press plays in promoting IMF and bankster debt slavery and the bond market shitcoin casino.
In the real world, away from bond shitcoin promotional fiat media, the Argentine peso has barely stopped declining, and consumer prices have been constantly rising, exactly as you would expect from a drastic increase in the money supply. Continued intervention in the foreign exchange market has now made Argentina expensive even in dollar terms[7]. The black market peso exchange rate has dropped 30% against the dollar in just 21 months, during which time the dollar itself has been dropping against most major foreign currencies. The official rate, on the other hand, has dropped by around 70%, from 400 pesos per dollar to 1,300 pesos per dollar. Just in the last month of July, both rates dropped around 13%, which suggests Argentine people and the banking speculators already see the writing on the wall.
It is of course important to remember that government inflation statistics are obviously always and everywhere manipulated to understate the true extent of inflation, and in Argentina this is taken to absurd lengths.[8] And yet, even by the government’s own ridiculous numbers, the situation is a monstrous travesty. After year-on-year price inflation rates rose to almost 300% in the first few months of his presidency, it has declined to the 30-40% range in recent months, and the cumulative price inflation since Milei has taken office is 155%, a figure that can in no way be explained away or blamed on predecessors. That the inflation has slowed down to these high levels is no triumph whatsoever. It is very uncommon to maintain price inflation above 200% for a long period of time. After doubling and tripling the money supply, an insolvent government can meet most of its obligations in its own currency, and more excessive money creation is not necessary or useful anymore, because very little purchasing power is left in the currency, and increasing its supply just translates to quick devaluation and very little seigniorage.
After almost two years in office, it would have been absolutely trivial for Milei to bring price inflation down to close to zero with the one simple trick that the Austrians he claims to adore have always stood by: stop creating money. Price inflation is not some act of god, natural disaster, or inexplicable spiritual malady; it is not something governments need to fight; it is something only governments and central banks can cause; it is the inevitable consequence of increasing the money supply, and that was entirely Milei’s choice. He ran on a platform of ending inflation, had the mandate to close the central bank, which was the easiest way to achieve it, but he reneged on his promise and abjectly failed at his stated mission. After all this time, the blame for this failure lies entirely with Milei. It was his choice to keep the central bank running and to massively increase the money supply. He can keep hysterically crying about the socialists and Kirchnerists all he likes, but this is now fully his presidency, and this inflation today is entirely his making.
It’s very telling here to compare Argentina to Lebanon, another hyperinflationary basket case which went through hyperinflation over the past six years and has seen its currency devalue even more than the peso. After year-on-year price inflation rose north of 100% and the lira was devalued by more than 95% against the dollar, the government could meet its lira liabilities, and it stopped increasing the money supply significantly, with year-on-year price inflation coming down to 14% in recent months. During this period, Lebanon witnessed a massively destructive war, and for much of the period it did not even have a president. An economic miracle, this was not. Everyone understands this is just the inevitable winding down of hyperinflation, a central bank taking a break after its currency has been completely destroyed and more money creation becoming futile. With very little wealth held in liras, increasing the supply of the lira can barely generate any seigniorage for the government, just very quick devaluation. Nowhere in the fiat cartel media is anyone lauding this as an economic miracle, or recommending war and political vacuum to achieve it. And yet, with a price inflation rate more than double that of Lebanon, Milei is being lauded as a genius. The difference is that he has taken billions in loans from the IMF, WB and IDB, and is allowing Wall Street and bond traders to profit from his central bank destroying the peso to pay exorbitant bond yields. His despicable groveling to the genocidal Zionist regime couldn’t have hurt, too.
A Tale of Two Shitcoins: Which is the economic miracle and which is the result of war and a political vacuum?
The hype around free market reforms has also sadly tempted a lot of Argentines to deposit billions of US Dollar cash savings into the banking system[9], where they are likely to disappear into the black hole of government debt ponzi. Milei and Caputo are currently trying to force the banks to buy more government bonds, yet again using the savings of Argentinians to prop up the government’s unsustainable debt, which is crashing the banks’ stocks and bringing back painful memories of the Corralón of 2001.[10] Another IMF bailout so soon after the last one seems highly unlikely, although Milei is actually offering to give the genocidal monster Netanyahu an honorary residency[11] so you never know.
Fiat cartel media is also lauding Milei for achieving GDP growth, but this is also ridiculous, given how much inflation he has created. It is always possible to pump GDP numbers in the short run with money creation, but the cost is paid in the future through debt servicing, fiscal and monetary crises, and burst economic bubbles. Another ridiculous stat being lauded by economically-illiterate fiat bankster media is a sharp decline in the poverty rate. All government produced statistics are creative accounting nonsense, but poverty rates are one of the most creative and nonsensical. The poverty rate is calculated by comparing incomes to living costs, and at a time in which the currency is devaluing as quickly as it is in Argentina, this becomes a futile exercise in creative and arbitrary accounting, as all incomes, prices, denominators, and numerators shift quickly, and the statistician can take extreme liberties with his choices of deflators and real adjustments. It is inconceivable that millions of Argentines have escaped poverty as their currency has been destroyed, prices have risen in pesos and dollars, and unemployment[12] and the tax burden have risen. On the contrary, one of the most reliable indicators that the Milei miracle is fake is how soon it came after he came into office. If he were to indeed create an economic miracle, it would definitely not happen overnight. It would require economic decisions extremely unpopular in the short term, it would cause an economic recession as countless people lose their fake fiat jobs, as labor and capital are reallocated to uses determined by the market rather than government and fiat inflation. Milei’s decisive electoral victory seemed a unique opportunity to pull this off, using the popular mandate to close the central bank and grit the nation’s teeth through the pain until the benefits materialized, but he chose immediate gratification through inflation and debt instead.
All talk of a free market is empty rhetoric as long as the government manipulates the money, which is a part of every economic exchange in the market, and in Argentina, government control of the money is complete. The money supply continues to increase, and the central bank is imposing an interest rate of 65%, making speculation on the government’s bonds the only possibly profitable industry. Restrictions on foreign currency are still in place in spite of all the talk of liberalization.[13]
Milei seems to have managed to balance the budget, but this is not the win his promoters think it is.[14] The budget is only balanced if one does not count the cost of servicing the debt, which is enormous. Balancing the budget while piling on more debt and enormously growing the cost of debt servicing is like closing the barn door after the cows have already left; it’s not going to bring them back. Further, he has raised taxes in spite of promising to cut his arm before raising them.[15] This just means an increased burden of the state on society, primarily to pay off bond speculators. He may have reduced government spending, which seems admirable on its face, but in reality this has come mainly in the form of cuts to public works like road maintenance, which will mean decrepit infrastructure, and cuts to retirement and pensions[16], exacerbating the poverty his sycophants in the media pretend he has reduced. The viral video of him eliminating entire government ministries is yet another broken campaign promise, with most of these being renamed into secretaries and the total cost savings amounting to a rounding error.[17] He has also vowed to quadruple spending on the military[18], a ridiculous waste for a bankrupt government under no threat from its friendly neighbors, and likely an expensive stunt to curry favor with the global arms industry and the US and Israeli governments in the hope of getting more loans.
In sum, Milei has increased inflation, taxation, and public debt, the unholy trinity of cardinal sins for the Austrian school economists he claims to adore. He has also increased military spending and supported the supreme statist crime of genocide. And what did Argentina get in return for these five indelible abominations? Just a highly volatile shitcoin casino in the form of volatile peso and government bonds with enormous yields, making bond and foreign exchange speculation the only path to financial security in Argentina, albeit a very risky one. And his fans also got empty stupid theatrics with chainsaws and profanity-laden speeches.
The sad reality is that the depreciation of fiat creates a demand for chasing yield from government bonds, and all over the world, a lot of money is forced by government regulation to go into government bonds, under the ridiculous pretext that they are the safest investment. This means a giant captive market of helpless suckers for insiders and banks to pump-and-dump government bonds on, and the fiat financial media is the pied piper luring people worldwide into these scams. The situation is identical to how shitcoin scammers invent ridiculous narratives to promote premined shitcoins, which cryptocurrency media spreads to tempt gamblers to invest in them while the makers of these coins dump their premined coins as they inevitably go to zero. “Argentina’s economic miracle” is just another scam narrative to pump and dump Argentina bond shitcoins, like “Turing-complete world computer”, “smart contract platform”, and “real estate on the blockchain” are scam narratives to pump premined scamcoins. The average macro analyst mainly differs from the average crypto influencer social media account in having better grammar and lower income. And Milei now has the rare distinction of being a seasoned veteran of both markets, as he combined ‘economic miracle’ bonds with tweeting to encourage suckers to invest in a memecoin to support Argentina’s economic growth and small businesses, then proceeded to rugpull them in hours, with his team making off with tens of millions of dollars.[19]
Without ending inflation, Milei’s libertarian and Austrian economics theatrics have been hijacked to serve the most unlibertarian and un-Austrian ends imaginable. Just when it seemed like the fiat bond ponzi in Argentina had ended and could no longer be salvaged, the same banksters who had gotten Argentina to this place plucked this clown from TV studios to pretend-play an anti-inflationist Austrian economist at the Presidency, creating the illusion that Argentina’s government’s finances and peso can be saved, tricking millions of Argentines into depositing their cash dollar savings back into the black hole of the Argentine banking system, and getting more suckers to play the government bond shitcoin casino instead of having productive jobs.
All of this would have been avoided if Milei had done what he promised in his election campaign: close the central bank. Inflation would have ended, the government would have had to actually balance its budget, and after a painful adjustment period in the first year of his presidency, Argentina would already be on the road to recovery today, with no inflation. The peso would even have likely appreciated once the money printer that creates it was destroyed, as had happened in Iraq when the US military destroyed the Iraqi central bank.[20] Instead, Argentina has now been through two years of painful volatility, growing unemployment and price rises, and it is yet to face the real pain from the growing debt burden and inflation.
When the ponzi collapses, as it always does, Argentines will have lost their cash savings, and most suckers who invest in bonds will have been ruined, but the fiat cartel banks will walk away well-fed, as they always do. Milei will discredit Austrian and libertarian ideas for decades to come by associating them with their diametrical opposites: inflation, indebtedness, bond market pump-and-dumps, and genocide. It is only his constant invocation of the Austrians that makes me take time from my busy schedule to discuss this con artist and his unfortunate country. Socialists of the world, you can now laugh at us libertarians for stealing from you the same line for which we have mocked you for decades: but it wasn’t real libertarianism!
In a fantastic revelation of his character after the memecoin shitcoin he promoted collapsed, Milei had the audacity to go on TV to abdicate all responsibility for the losses among his followers, and effectively told his countrymen: NO CRYING IN THE CASINO![21] We can only hope Milei takes his own advice when his peso and bonds scams implode and spares us the repulsive spectacle of his demonic plastic-surgeoned face crying.
[1] https://x.com/saifedean/status/1877717156420341885
[3] https://x.com/SchamneNicolass/status/1910835804282249343
[6] https://thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-mileis-manmade-miracle-argentina-economy https://ft.com/content/7b687fd9-41ce-41ab-ae73-93b96e11b666 https://telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/19/when-will-world-wake-up-argentinian-miracle/
[11] https://nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/netanyahus-argentina-conundrum.html
[13]https://bcra.gob.ar/SistemasFinancierosYdePagos/Regulaciones_exterior_y_cambios_i.asp?utm_source=chatgpt.com & https://ambito.com/economia/para-las-empresas-el-final-del-cepo-debera-esperar-cuales-son-las-restricciones-que-quedan-vigentes-n6134370
[14] https://mises.org/power-market/when-balancing-budget-hurts-economy
[18] https://economist.com/the-americas/2024/08/22/javier-milei-is-splurging-on-the-army & https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2024/09/16/argentina-gasto-defensa-milei-orix
[19] https://x.com/saifedean/status/1890724929168912636. The case of this shitcoin is still being tried in American courts and Milei may yet find himself in serious trouble over it. https://lapoliticaonline.com/entrevista/agost-carreno-en-la-causa-de-estados-unidos-empiezan-a-nombrar-a-karina-milei/
[20] https://mises.org/free-market/dinars-or-dollar
[21] https://x.com/100xgemfinder/status/1891963507215622432
