4 hours ago
This is a better source than the inaccessible and gratuitously insulting WSJ page linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45716359. Those comments should be merged here.
4 hours ago
Gratuitously insulting?
3 hours ago
The WSJ's "you have been blocked" page is gratuitously insulting.
4 hours ago
3 hours ago
I'm sure this is going to be used by anarcho capitalist types and the media to say Milei's program of cutting public services is noble and great and here's the proof. I feel like I must be taking crazy pills though. If the Argentinian gov needs 40 billion from the US to continue functioning, how does that mean Milei's policies are working? It's like if I decide to use a car to drive 1000 miles, but I only buy enough gas for 500 miles, but a dude at the midpoint in my journey offers to lend me enough money for the next 500 miles of gas if I kick all Chinese people out of my car in return, and then I return and say see due to my amazing thought leadership my car has double the gas mileage now.
2 hours ago
I doubt it.
For one thing, it hasn’t been long enough. For another, Argentina is in such a deep hole it will take a generation at best to get out of it.
2 hours ago
Libertarians and Conservatives can all wish for a smaller government and slash things apart in America - it's not going to change the fact that America is a corrupt socialist country which runs semis, bails out billionaires, subsidizes farmers, and uses taxpayer money to enrich business owners.
The only difference between American socialism and Argentinian socialism was that Argentinian socialism pretended to help the poor but America doesn't even pretend to help the poor.
2 hours ago
How do you define socialism? I don't believe that we the people or the state collectively own the means of production in any major industry. Private ownership by capitalists is still the dominant economic system in the US.
an hour ago
The US literally purchased shares of Intel - thus owning means of production.
The US also bails out a group of people all the time. The group is called the rich.
Furthermore, it subsidizes select groups like big ag.
Except these, the US is predominantly capitalistic but so was Argentina. Their populace was fed up with the pretense of helping the poor while bailing out oligarchs. America doesn't seem to pretend to help the poor. Poors are undesirables.
21 minutes ago
Owning part of one company in one sector is not socialism unless you think nearly every country in the world since the invention of the limited company is socialist?
“Bailing out the rich” isn’t socialist is it? What do you think “socialist” means?
I don’t think you understand why the word “socialist” scares so many people. It’s not a word you can just slap on anything to make it “bad”, many people are actually scared about the underlying ideas not the word.
Some Americans seem to just think socialism=bad “because the CIA and the NYT does propaganda”. You may think America is bad and I may agree with you, that doesn’t make it socialist.
In the GDR you couldn’t start a private enterprise without a license. Any enterprise doing anything.
In socialist Burma, there were no privately-owned factories _at all_.
In Czechoslovakia the constitution banned a private company from employing anyone other than the owner of the company.
In Soviet Russia you needed a permit to move city. If you were a farmer you were unlikely to get that permit. You work for the collective farm, the government set the price they would pay you for your produce, and you couldn’t move city to a new job.
I hope these examples show why “the us government is socialist partly because it owns shares in Intel and partly because it’s a lender-of-last-resort for rich people” sounds fatuous.
3 hours ago
Bolivia also ended their socialist government recently. The mass exodus out of Venezuela has hurt the reputation of the left in South America.
4 hours ago
Does this mean we're going to have to bail them out again?
4 hours ago
Did we bail them out before? From what I can tell, we opened up a currency swap using a Treasury fund (not funded by tax dollars) specifically devoted to currency stabilization.
4 hours ago
A currency swap IS a bailout if the swap occurs at a price above what would otherwise be the market clearing price. "currency stabilization" is just a funny way to say "artificially propping up the peso"
> using a Treasury fund (not funded by tax dollars)
tell me, where do you think the Treasury gets its dollars...
an hour ago
The ESF is self financing. And yeah, sure, it is artificially propping up the peso, the same way we propped up the Mexican peso, the Thai bhat, and others once upon a time.
3 hours ago
It would be kind of ironic if they were printing them.
an hour ago
Nope, it's self financing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Stabilization_Fund
40 minutes ago
> The fund began operations in April 1934, under director Archie Lochhead and financed by $2 billion of the $2.8 billion gold surplus the government had realized by devaluing the dollar.
> The ESF can convert SDRs into dollars on its account by issuing certificates against them and selling the certificates to the Federal Reserve,[6] and later repurchase them when it has surplus cash.
So they did actually fund it by printing money.
4 hours ago
If not us tax dollars, how are they funded? Are the backed with full faith of credit of the us government? It’s hard to search for answers on this one.
an hour ago
It's self financing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_Stabilization_Fund
3 hours ago
No, it means the US just made a profit on the Argentine Pesos it bought to stabilize the currency.
3 hours ago
How did the US profit if the peso has continued to fall?
5 minutes ago
Interestingly, the US made money on the Mexico bailout in the 80s and 90s. That’s only on the interest, not to mention the US economic activity.
https://www.piie.com/publications/chapters_preview/43/6iie27...
Under “disbursement and repayment”
2 hours ago
It's strengthening tonight. It fell when markets thought he might lose. But then he won.