"What happened with the huge sum of money that Macri’s government received from the IMF? Still to this day, this is a controversial question that is fiercely debated in Argentina.

A lot of the money simply provided liquidity to facilitate capital flight for Argentine oligarchs, in violation of the IMF’s stated policies.

Under Macri, capital flight tripled, totaling more than $86 billion from 2015 to 2019, according to the central bank (BCRA). A mere 100 rich individuals and firms transferred $24.7 billion (28.7%) out of the country, and 1% of Argentina’s companies were behind $41.1 billion, or 47.8%, of the capital flight.

Despite Washington’s help, Macri was widely disliked, and he lost the 2019 election. However, the enormous IMF debt tied the hands of the center-left President Alberto Fernández, who won the vote.

Fernández was basically a lame-duck president from the beginning. Even though he rejected the last $11 billion tranche of Macri’s IMF loan, Argentina was already trapped in odious debt it couldn’t pay off.

Mere months after Fernández came to power in December 2019, the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which only exacerbated the economic difficulties in Argentina.

By 2022, the country had nearly run out of the dollars needed to service its external debt, and its net foreign exchange reserves were almost negative (as shown by economist Brad Setser). This was one of the main reasons for the rapid rise in inflation, which started to spiral out of control that year.

Argentina was on the verge of defaulting, which is why China stepped in, in 2023, and offered a swap line in renminbi (also known as yuan), which Argentina used to pay the IMF."

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/03/10/javier-milei-argentina-imf-debt-trap-loan/

From anarchocapitalist to neoliberal: "The inflation caused by this IMF debt is what led far-right libertarian Javier Milei to power. He capitalized on the anger at the economic crisis in Argentina, and he offered a simplistic solution: slash government spending to the bone.

Milei also promised that he would abolish the central bank and adopt the US dollar as the official currency, although he did not implement either of these policies. (Development economist Ha-joon Chang called Milei’s proposals “insane” and warned that Argentina abandoning its monetary sovereignty and adopting the dollar would turn the country into a US “colony”.)

Now, Milei is backtracking on another promise — his vow to never increase government debt — and is taking on a new IMF loan. In this way, Milei is continuing the same debt-trap cycle of his right-wing predecessors, which caused the very economic crisis that catapulted this fringe “anarcho-capitalist” madman into the presidential Pink House.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose."

If you really dig into the roots and rocks of those pseudo-ideologies in the US 50s, anarcho-capitalism, right-libertarianism, neoliberalism, what you find is well funded and dedicated anti-communists aiming in organizing a reactionary social force against capital''s enemies.

#unionism #syndicalism #iww #ilo
@remixtures