Saifedean Ammous, known for his work as an advisor to the government of El Salvador on issues related to bitcoin, recently launched harsh criticism against the government of Javier Milei in Argentina. Ammous claimed that Milei’s supposed adherence to the Austrian school of economics, so promoted during his campaign, was nothing more than a series of television clichés. This was expressed in an argumentative thread published on the social network X.
Many Argentines have reasons to be satisfied with Milei’s management. Since taking office in a critical economic context, with monthly inflation of 25.5% in December 2023, the index has been declining steadily, reaching 2.4% in November. That is how he expresses it last data published by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the Argentine Republic (INDEC).
However, there has been no shortage of criticism. The economist Robert Cachanosky, for example, has resorted to the social network point out what he considers unfulfilled promises, including the dollarization of the economy. For his part, Rodolfo Andragnes, founder of the NGO Bitcoin Argentina and LABITCONF.com, has voiced in local media I expected more from Milei in terms of individual freedom and empowerment through bitcoin.
In this context, Saifedean Ammous also raised his voice. The economist questioned the Argentine president, pointing out that during his electoral campaign he promised to dismantle the Central Bank of the Republic. However, once in office, Milei put that promise aside and began to make excuses. According to Saifedean, instead of a true economic opening, Milei opted for the same statist rhetoric that governments use to justify inflation.
During his campaign, Milei made eliminating the central bank one of his main promises, even saying it was non-negotiable. However, upon taking office, he stopped talking about the issue and began to shield himself with elaborate explanations. With this, Milei fully adopted the same state rhetoric that governments often use to justify inflation: that the short-term pain of stopping it would be so great that it is better to continue with it and ignore the long-term consequences. The reality is that the Argentine central bank is bankrupt, and the sooner this reality is recognized, the sooner the problem can be effectively addressed.
Saifedean Ammous.
Bukele’s advisor does not stop there and points out that Milei made a mistake by not declaring a default on the public debt, which, according to him, would have been a “Rothbardian” solution – Milei considers himself an admirer of the economist Murray Rothbard. In his opinion, although a default and the closure of the central bank would have caused a painful adjustment in the first months, it would later have allowed the Argentine economy to grow on more solid bases. Without the ability to print money, future governments would be limited, and both bitcoin and foreign currencies would dominate the economic landscape..
“By not closing the central bank and allowing it to increase money printing, Milei is sowing the seeds of the nation’s looming currency crises,” Saifedean commented. Likewise, he argued that the president “seems eager to close another deal with the IMF, which will leave Argentines with more generational debt slavery.”
It should be noted that Argentina, a member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1956, has signed 22 agreements with the institution. In 2018, the gaucho country signed a loan of $50 billion, the largest in the IMF’s history up to that point.
There were also words for tax issues.
Not surprisingly, he is raising taxes significantly, showing that his understanding of the Austrian economy is no deeper than the clichés he repeated on television. Raising taxes to facilitate more government debt is a crime against the Argentine people to benefit international banking cartels and IMF criminals. It is a tyrannical recipe promoted by the Keynesians at the IMF, and has nothing to do with what any real economist would recommend.
Saifedean Ammous.
On the other hand, the finance specialist described Milei’s decision to send gold from Argentina to London in search of easy dollars as “the icing on the cake.” In this context, he took the opportunity to draw a parallel with the book The Ascent of Money by historian Niall Ferguson, who described how Argentina’s economic problems began. According to Ferguson, when President Juan Domingo Perón visited the vaults of the Central Bank in 1946, he was surprised by the amount of gold found there – more than 1,000 tons. Subsequently, Perón and his successors could not resist the temptation to finance their expenses by depleting these reserves, which led to eight decades of serious economic problems.
Here it is important to mention that, at the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was among the most prosperous countries in the world. During the first decades of that period, lived a period of notable economic prosperity, driven mainly by its agricultural sector. The country stood out for its high level of per capita income, thanks to the abundance of fertile lands that allowed it to export key products such as meat, wheat and corn, satisfying the growing international demand for food. That success in international trade was an essential driver of its economic growth.
Saifedean closed his thread aggressively, regretting that in Argentina bitcoin is not used to solve the serious economic imbalances that the country is going through.
Rothbard must be turning in his grave every time this Peronist invokes him to justify his actions… Milei is a classic Latin American populist inflationist, who buys short-term popularity with future inflation and debt. In essence, no different from all Argentine leaders since Perón. His free market rhetoric appears to have tricked poor Argentinians into trusting their failing central bank again, instead of trying to find a functional alternative like bitcoin.
Saifedean Ammous.
In the face of criticism such as that of Saifedean, Milei has made it clear that before closing the Central Bank, it is first necessary to clean up its financial situation, especially the debt and associated liabilities. According to Milei, once these problems are resolved, the relevance of the peso could be reduced and progress towards eventual dollarization or the use of cryptocurrencies. This would make closing the entity much easier.
