Saw your comment. Would like to understand a bit better what's going on there. I vaguely recall a long thread on him that led me to believe he was pillaging the economy under the guise of the exact opposite. Can't recall any details, but it was convincing at the time (might have been saifedean who wrote it).

Yep it was Saifedean

Anatomy of the Milei Ponzi

In my previous piece on Milei[1] 18 days ago, I argued that the Milei administration is running a debt and inflation ponzi that is coming near its ...

Also: "It is true that he has made the names of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other thinkers of the Austrian School known to a wider public. But his knowledge of their ideas and theories is superficial and flawed, and his praise is therefore double-edged. In any case, we can only advise the public not to regard Milei’s statements on economic philosophy as authoritative... ...it is not enough that he pursue liberal goals with his policies. Rather, the political means must be objectively suitable for actually achieving those goals. This should be self-evident, but it is often disregarded in politics, as Ludwig von Mises repeatedly pointed out. Milei’s policies are a case in point." - Prof. Dr. Rolf W. Puster, Prof. Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe https://mises.org/power-market/resignation-scientific-advisory-board-ludwig-von-mises-institute-germany

Need to read this again, but wanted to post waxwings other comment as I think it answers my question to him View quoted note →

Ergo, Play fiat games, win fiat prices

My key question about Milei is, why has he printed so much money (more than even his predecessors), when he promised exactly the opposite?

So give us the counter point? I like him, but this stuff seems pretty rough

What stuff do you mean? The recent news is that his party lost a crucial local election, and the market (correctly) perceived that as a warning sign that the extreme leftists who have driven the Argentinian economy into the ground for 3+ decades are quite likely to take back power, and so went into a complete tailspin. How does that reflect poorly on Milei? Don't get me wrong there are a lot of negatives here. 1, neither dollarizing nor allowing a free market in Pesos is somehow finding the worst solution (a soft peg); eventually the market will attack it, and it's happened sooner than expected. 2. corruption cases involving his sister Karina, I'm not sure of the details but I get a very bad sense of that person (who was the key in the "Libra" fiasco). That stuff doesn't actually matter much imo but optics-wise it's a disaster. 3. well honestly there's no specific 3, I think everything else that hasn't worked well about Milei's tenure has all related to the fact that he does not have full political power, his party is smallish and new, he does not have control over the lower houses so has to use executive power to do anything substantial, and the other side of the debate is genuinely deeply (imo) evil; the classic south American disease of take all the country's wealth and give it to cronies (including helping the poor to be clear, but still stealing/cronyism - for which Kirchner has just been convicted btw, another story largely ignored byvWestern media), even though it has lead already to complete ruin, they want to keep doing it until they outcompete Venezuela.

I think that's just false. Any evidence? Milei put the government in surplus - something basically unique, certainly amongst Western governments. He also specifically said he would stop financing the treasury with money issuance. Apparently the IMF reported the same thing this year. While at the same the economy grew at more than 6%, and the poverty rate was actually reduced, not increased.

Yes, very true, but your standard here is "don't use fiat money". It's a good standard! But it's one that literally no country meets. I do agree it's reasonable to criticize Milei for not taking non-fiat money more seriously, but he actually put the government in surplus and did *not* print money to finance govt activities, despite what people apparently believe (choosing to believe western media is just incredibly stupid here, but apparently if it suits your bias, it's fine!)

Are you saying the money supply graphs are wrong? Going up like there's no tomorrow. https://mises.org/power-market/financial-mirage-argentina

Definitely don't trust our media here to characterize things honestly or well here, so appreciate the extra insight

It is about holding a politician who claims to be libertarian to a libertarian standard. This means attaining libertarian goals through libertarian means. A fiscal surplus achieved by increasing tax coercion is certainly not a libertarian policy program. Increasing govt debt is not a libertarian policy program either, as it just pushes the instance of tax coercion into the future. If the surplus was attained by reducing spending, reducing debt and also reducing tax coercion at the same time, then yes. It can be appreciated. And the counter argument that 'net taxes' fell is also not what I consider to be the standard. There should be no increase in taxes whatsoever. In terms of monetary reform, abolishing the central bank would be worthy of praise. Backing the Peso with Gold would be another one. The fact that no government doing this is not a valid justification he can give either. And it's not just an economic criticism. There's also the question of whether he brought in libertarian legal reforms.

Well, the article itself says immediately after quoting a 165% increase in M0, that "the BCRA no longer finances the Treasury by printing new pesos since 2023". So what is the cause of that increase? It wasn't clear to me that the article had an answer? It starts, form that point, to talk about credit in general. I suspect the right answer is rather complex.

But M0 includes cash and not only money printing. More specifically, if demand for cash rises a lot, then what's in M1 (money in bank accounts) can shift into M0. That's not "printing money out of thin air". It's the same money (here, pesos) moving from one form to another. Another thing that really drove this, from what I'm reading today, is something called "LELIQs". Basically to try to suppress the hyperinflationary effect of their excessive spending, earlier governments got banks to put excess peso reserves in high interest paying instruments. Milei's govt made it a big priority to remove this, as it was a huge interest expense that the government had to pay. To do that, these instruments were liquidated - converting them into cash, which put them in M0. The bottom line is "printing money out of thin air" is the chronic problem of Argentina for decades, and Milei was explicitly trying to reverse it. M0 is a pretty arcane measure and difficult to interpret, but bear in mind, if Milei was printing and spending like a drunken sailor, all of his huge opposition in Argentina would not be shy to point it out, since his entire campaign was based on reversing it.