In the Córdoba trade stock market, in front of some 400 entrepreneurs and within the framework of the 125th anniversary of the institution, Javier Milei presented a diagnosis of the economic situation in the middle of the week of tension in the markets. But the strongest of his speech was not in the numbers, but in a political revelation: he showed that the landing of Federico Sturzenegger in the government was practically an request from the International Monetary Fund.
On Friday, September 19, Milei was before the Cordoba business with his usual rhetoric against state intervention. He reported a talk that he had with Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, in Italy. There he explained his vision of how regulations that seek to force competitive markets end up working growth when increasing yields appear in concentrated sectors. “What had to be done is to deregulate and release increasing returns and that that was going to generate economic growth. Imagine that as the economy had not left, Kristalina Georgieva had not very comfortable,” he said.
Some time later, already in New York and after the sanitation of the Central Bank, he said that Georgieva proved him right: “You are right.” According to Milei, the director’s director put her own economyrs to test the hypothesis and concluded that if it is disregarded, the economy grows.
The most striking moment of speech came when he revealed that Georgieva herself asked Federico Sturzenegger as an advisor to carry out the deregulation process. In this way, Milei suggested that the current Minister of Deregulation and Transformation of the State – central to its cabinet – was promoted by the IMF, reinforcing the perception that Argentine economic policy is defined more in Washington than in Buenos Aires.
The anecdote, counted with enthusiasm, left a disturbing background for many entrepreneurs: while the president promises freedom and growth, he also recognizes the structural dependence of the country in front of the bottom in the middle of a scenario of overwhelming debt. In Córdoba, Milei sought to convey confidence, but ended up exhibiting the fragility of his own economic power.
