More than twenty years ago I met Javier Milei, at a stage in which we both analyzed most problems from the same matrix: radical liberalism. As is often the case when looking at the world through a single framework, many situations tend to be interpreted uniformly. As I warned Charlie Mungerto someone who has a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Over time it becomes clear that the economy rarely works like this.
Argentina needed a deep adjustment. That is not in discussion. For years it dragged severe distortions: an oversized State, misaligned prices and a suffocating regulatory framework. In that context, a drastic correction was inevitable.
It is also true that Milei’s style—direct, confrontational—is not a defect, but a tool of power. It allowed him to differentiate himself and build a firm base of support in an exhausted political system. This type of leadership simplifies the conflict, mobilizes and generates political identity.
But it’s not enough to sustain it. The error is not economic. It’s ideological.
The logic of the program is to deregulate, adjust and let the price system order the economy. In theoretical terms, it is consistent. The problem appears when, taken to the extreme, this logic eliminates from the analysis what in practice defines everything: time.
The markets correct, but not at the speed that politics needs. The economic recomposition takes years. Meanwhile, activity falls, income deteriorates and social pressure increases. As you warned John Maynard Keynes —a historically resisted reference within liberalism—, in the long term we will all be dead. The challenge is not the long term, but going through the process until we reach it.
And to do that, you need capital. The current adjustment removes liquidity from the system. That may be necessary. The difficulty appears when it is executed without simultaneously generating the conditions for this gap to be compensated by investment.
Without investment, the adjustment does not order: it accelerates the contraction before the system has time to recompose itself.
Here the ideological blind spot appears: believing that order is first and capital arrives later. It is an elegant hypothesis in theory, but fragile in practice. Without a credible commitment to inward investment—prior or simultaneous—the adjustment withdraws liquidity faster than the system can rebuild itself.
Capital does not arrive out of theoretical conviction. It comes out of trust. And trust is not automatic: it is built.
Capital—especially institutional capital, which truly defines these transitions—does not fall in love with charisma or political epics. And much less does it respond to confrontation or verbal aggression: these types of signals, far from attracting them, scare them away.
Evaluates stability, predictability and consistency. At that level, form matters.
The same style that builds power inward can erode confidence outward. There appears the tension that defines the process: what strengthens politically can weaken financially.
This does not invalidate the course. But it exposes a critical flaw in the execution. Adjustment is necessary, but not sufficient.
Without an active strategy to attract capital in parallel, the program is exposed to an obvious risk: losing political sustainability before showing economic results. Gradualism failed, but that does not make any speed viable.
External support—particularly alignment with figures like Donald Trump—responds to a geopolitical logic and can offer support in the short term. But that kind of support is, by definition, contingent. It cannot be taken for granted nor does it replace the need to build trust to attract capital on a sustained basis.
Economic history shows a clear pattern: programs do not fail because of the diagnosis. They fail because they do not survive the transition.
The problem is not the direction. It’s the bridge. Because in economics, as in politics, it is not enough to be right. You have to survive long enough for that reason to have time to work.
Sergio Feler is an economist, investor and author of “Principles of Power” a work that explores the mechanisms behind human behavior, decision-making and the development of personal power in complex contexts.
*Economist, investor and author of “Principles of Power”
by Sergio Feler
