 So tell us a little bit about Millet. Where does he come from? What's his background and how did he get to the position he is in today? Well, it's a very interesting story. Millet is a fascinating character. As far as I know, if you think of Millet in the year 2012 or 2013, he was an economist, he was a professional economist. He was working at a very big private firm here, a private firm which for example, runs the airports in Argentina. So an important company. He was more of an orthodox economist. That was his background. He has studied that. He didn't like the state. He was not an interventionist. He was not a socialist. But he was not loud about it. Nobody knew him. He was a teacher. He used to be a teacher or he taught in some universities. And this is what I know. I don't know if this was 2011, 2012 or around there. He was a professor at this university. He was very strict. He taught mathematical economics. And he had this student who was one of his only good students according to his standards because he was very strict. So he approved the subject. So Millet told him, well, I want you to come and teach with me. So they developed like a relationship. And then they started working together in this company that I'm telling you, the airports. And they got this relationship. And Federico, his student, he had read, he was an economist too. He was a graduated economist now. And he was fond of reading libertarian thinkers. Aynbaran, Friedrich Hayek, Louis von Mises, Milton Friedman. He was a big fan of Milton Friedman. And Millet was also a big fan of Milton Friedman. But there was an argument between them, Federico and Millet. And Millet says, I don't know, and Federico says, I think in terms of monopoly theory, I think you need to read this guy, this American economist called Murray Robert. And then Millet says, okay, so I need to read Murray Robert. How do I get a book of him? And then he found this libertarian bookstore in Argentina, which is called Union Editorial. And I know the seller there, you know, and the seller will sell you 10 books if you go and are looking for one. So Millet started talking to Rodolfo, who is this book seller. And he bought like 20 books, all of Austrian economics, you know, Rothbard, Hayek, Mises, et cetera. And let's say that was around 2014, in 2015, because that's when he started his more public appearances. He would, because Millet and Federico, his former student, and another economist who they became friends of, Diego Chacomini, they published this book about the collapse or the imminent collapse of the Kirchnerist model. So Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was finishing her second term and Macri was coming, right? We didn't know that Macri was coming in this time, but they published this book, bringing a solution, a very orthodox solution to the problem Argentina was having, which implied or which suggested a strong fiscal adjustment to reduce subsidies, destined to subsidize energy consumption and gas prices, et cetera. So their suggestion, their proposal was reduce those subsidies, balance the budget, and you will terminate inflation. So it's a very orthodox, nothing Austrian there, very, very normal, let's say. But he gained some visibility with that book. So he had, and he started going to media and interviews. And of course, the best part is that they started facing him or getting him to debate other economists or politicians who, as you can think, they were Keynesians, they were Socialists, they were Peronists, and Millay became crazy with them. And he was like, no, you're a Keynesian, your leader is a disaster, and Keynes' book is a garbage and we need to throw it to the dustbin. So that personality became, I mean, people became crazy with that personality and it became viral. And everyone would be like, oh, have you seen this guy? He's like, he's like going crazy on economics, who would do that? And that was very fun. And then the government changed and then came Macri. And Macri placed in the central bank an MIT economist called Federico Trusenegger, a very well-known, very good economist, who tried to implement a inflation targeting regime in Argentina. And it's not that it didn't work, is that, as I was saying before, we were not patient enough. And we didn't fix the underlying problem, which was the deficit, right? So at the end of 2017, other people in government decided that the monetary policy was being too strict, and they decided that the central bank should reduce interest rates. And they kind of imposed that to him. And that was a blast for the economy that didn't suit, didn't like, markets didn't like that. And we started, a crisis started, an exchange crisis started, the dollar was around 17, it ended up next year in 40. So in an economy that had 25% inflation in those times, so it was very bad. And also, because we were talking about Belé here, Belé kind of liked the work that Trusenegger was doing in the central bank. So he was very horrified when he saw all this, and he started being very critical of Macri's government. And he started saying, this is going, well, before that, also before that, he was saying, be careful with the deficit, you're not fixing the deficit, this can lead us to a crisis. And then after that, the vulneration of the independence of the central bank, then Belé was a very hard, a very hard critic of the whole Macri government, which gave him a lot of credibility because in the meantime, our economy was stagnated from 2011 until today, stagnation and even decline in per capita terms. Our salaries were falling down in real terms and in dollar terms, so people were very tired and angry, and they were feeling that kirchnerism was not a solution, but then Macri was not, was neither a solution. And here is this guy, Javier Millay, who is an economist, who is very crazy, who I don't understand too much what he's saying, but I think he knows what he's talking about. And then came the four years of Alberto Fernandez, the pandemic, the lockdowns, and the lockdowns, they were terrible for people, but they were like this very good in terms of everyone valuing freedom again, because like, now we don't even have any, our freedom, I can't even go out and work, you know, and I think that it reminded them of what freedom was like. Exactly. We had to lose it. Suddenly everything was gone, suddenly all freedom was gone. Exactly. And that gave Alberto Fernandez a very good image for a month and a half, two months maybe, but then people started thinking, I'm not going to work, I'm not getting paid. Of course, if you were for a multinational company, you were fine, but what if you had to work in the train every day selling, you know, whatever you can sell? That was a different thing. And that's how Millet, this crazy economist criticizing everyone, became what we in Argentina call transversal. It's up and down. I mean, Millet is popular in the high class, let's say, people wealthy people, but he's also very popular in the working class if we can use these categories. He's very popular among people who are low earners, middle earners, high earners. And that's a very interesting phenomenon. And with all this very openly libertarian ideas, because when he started criticizing Macri, now he would use all the Austrian arsenal and Hayek and Mises. And when the pandemic came also, talking about freedom and Ayn Rand, et cetera. So for us, and I'm talking personally now, being in the libertarian movement for, let's say, 11 years or maybe 15 years now, it was such an interesting phenomenon to watch. I would call this libertarian populism, right? Because of his approach. Millet was a politician even before he decided to become a politician because he was talking like a leader, like he has a message. And he had, and people started saying, well, make it an action. Go, go, go, and I will vote for you. I want you to guide. Typically a message like that most people would ignore in most countries, in most circumstances, he'd get 10%, maybe 20%, but that would be it. But how did he go from being this outrageous commentator on television and radio to getting, what, 56% of the vote? I mean, he won by a significant, you know, significant majority. Yeah, well, he did. And that's a very interesting question because it helps us explain also some of his, let's say, pragmatism once he came into power. Why? Because Millet became, you know, this charismatic libertarian populist leader. And at the first election we had last year, it was a primary election. It's mandatory. Every party needs to do it. It's mandated by law. So he was not challenged by anyone. He has a party and he's the only presidential candidate of the party. But he has to go to the elections anyway. So the primary becomes a huge survey on opinion. And what happens to him? He became the number one. He got 30% of the votes. And then came the other parties. Every single candidate got less than 30% of the votes. There was Sergio Massa from the Peronist party. And there was Patricia Bullridge and Horacio Rodríguez Lareta from the center-right party, which was the party of Macri, which is all of this, it's a thing to take into account in itself. Because if you think of 2011 in Argentina, 2011, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner wins with 54% of the votes. In the first round, second to her comes a guy from literally the socialist party. 17% of the votes. So you have 54 and 10 is 64 and 7 is 77% was either a hardcore left-wing populist or a socialist. What's happening today in 2023? You had the Peronist vote. They had around 30 something percent in the first, in the primary. And then you had 56 or 57% of a very libertarian candidate and a center-right party. So something happened during these years besides Millet, which turned the Argentinian population more anti-Kirchnerist, more far, we went far away from socialist and interventionist ideas, and we went closer to center-right, a bit free market idea. So that's something to take into account. Then the first round happened. And then Sergio Massa, the Peronist candidate, got, I don't remember now how many votes, but let's say 36% of the votes. So now he was number one. And then came Millet with 30. So he didn't gain any vote between the primary and the first round. And then came Patricia Bullridge with around 26% or 23%, I think. And then a governor of a province in the center of the country, which is Córdoba, it's a very important province, 7%, important 7% there. He's a Peronist, but he's a center-right Peronist. So then the 56% can be explained because of this, the rejection of Peronism. We don't want Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. And we don't want per candidates. And Sergio Massa was a candidate for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. And that's how the 30 points of Millet remained there in the second round in the valotage. And he gained the ones from Patricia Bullridge and some of the governor of Córdoba. And that's how he became the president with 56% of the votes or 40 million votes, which is the most amount of votes that anyone got so far, right? And you were implying that there was some pragmatism there, that he maybe cut a deal with these center-right candidates in order to get those votes to moderate some of his more radical views? I think that it was kind of inevitable. I don't know if he thought of these coldly before the second round, but maybe after the events, you know, 26 points are, you're renting them, right? Or someone has lent them to you. And it has given it like this. I mean, things happened like this. In the campaign, he was promising, let's say, bigger cuts than what you can see now in the official proposal. He was proposing a dollarization, which I'm not saying he's not going there anytime in the next year or in 2025. But no one's talking about dollarization now. There's a central banker. There are no transparent plans for dollarizing. We only have like a stabilization plan on the way or something similar to that. And many of the economists who were there with him, they are no longer, they are not a part of the economic team of his government. In his economic team, he has the former Minister of Finance of Mauricio Macri. So I'm thinking of that when I say he became more pragmatic, you know, and his fiscal proposal, 57% of the adjustment is spending cuts, but 43% of the adjustment is a more income. So not that he's raising taxes, although he did raise two of them. But he's also, this is funny, he's putting in place attacks that has been, let's say, reduced three months ago because of a populist strategy of the Peronist Minister of Finance. But the funny thing is that him, as a member of Congress, he voted in favor of reducing the tax, which is totally logical. But now he needs to reinstate the tax because of our fiscal crisis. And that's pragmatism, that's politics. Right? You can't do everything. Or you can't do everything you want, at least not overnight. And yes. So what's your assessment of the package he has put together? And some of it needs to be approved by your parliament. I saw today that the court has halted the labor reforms, which seemed like pretty important. So what's your assessment of the package and the potential for it to pass to actually get implemented? So there are three parts there. The first part is what I was talking just now, this fiscal package, which is 57% spending cuts, 43% more tax collection. One of the tax parts needs to go through Congress, which is basically reinstating this tax that has been eliminated or reduced three months before, three months ago. So that needs to go to Congress. So that's one part that is here, but it impacts the third part of this three part plan that Millay launched. The first part, the fiscal plan. The second part, it's a decree. We have this legal figure here, which is the urgently needed decree. It's like that, urgently needed decree. Of course, urgently needed decrees had been used and abused by every government to do everything and whatever they wanted, right? And of course, to put in place many regulations and socialist measures. And of course, libertarians, non-libertarians, regular politicians would often oppose to this decrease because they argue that some measures should go and they need to be discussed in parliament. So I completely understand that point. So here's the problem. Inside that decree, which is in terms of its content, I love every part. It's a massive deregulation of the economy in terms of the labor market, in terms of prices, in terms of fishing regime, fishing duties, in terms of airplanes and the aerocommercial sector, in terms of tourism, in terms of the way we organize soccer. I mean, everything is going or wants to be deregulated by this decree. This decree is now in place. And one last thing. Rent is completely deregulated now. Of course, it's regulated by the civil and the commercial code, but there are no laws, specific laws regulating rent. So it's very ambitious. And it's in place because the legal amount of days passed and now this decree is the law. However, as you mentioned just now, yes, the judges can rule at least some parts of the decree out of order. And due to some presentations that labor unions, some important labor union did, that just it said, all the labor market part of the decree is now in standby. We will put it in standby and we will wait for the court to decide whether this decree is constitutional or not. So that's one obstacle, right? And this obstacle, which is present here in the labor market, could extend to many other areas of the decree. So that is, of course, a question mark. I don't know if it will pass or how strong and how fast will the justice be in order to block the changes, right? And there comes the third part. The third part is a law, it's a law project, which is also aimed at deregulating many other sectors of the economy, reducing some taxes in the long run, but also reinstating some of those who were eliminated a couple of months ago. And also changing things that are very important in terms of education, etc. So it's another very ambitious law project with many different subjects inside and that has to go through Congress. And in Congress, you know, the government will need to have the ability to say, okay, I will lose these battles, but let's make sure I win these others, right? So that's the scenario today at least. And in terms of Congress, how much support is there? So he has Macri's party, but who controls Congress politically? It's a total chaos now. So Millet has a party, but he has around, let's say, 38 or 40 deputies, deputados, I think the deputies, members of Congress or one chamber of Congress. But there are like 270 or 250 deputados. So he has a very low minority there. And then there is the coalition that got Macri into power, but the coalition has broken. Because that coalition had people who were very free market oriented politicians, very free market oriented politicians, somewhere even far riter than just free market, but others were kind of social democratic, you know, and not, they don't really believe in liberalization, in the order of a market economy, they are much, they believe in the role of a very important regulating role for government. So it's another, it's a question mark what's going to happen in Congress. But I wouldn't say he will lose all the battles. No, he will not lose all the battles. I think some reforms will happen. And still we need to see what happens with the decree, because as I was saying, so far, the decree is now ruling. For example, if I want to rent your house, I don't go and rent control anymore. Yes, no rent control anymore. I can sign a paper with you that says I will pay for the next seven months. So no, no time limit, no three years, no two years, seven months, I will pay in coins of gold. And if you sign it, and if I sign it, that's valid. So, and that's happening now. So if there are no, if the justice, if there are no judiciary claims there, of course, there is a process in which the Congress has something to say about the decree. I think it has like 10 or 15 more days to say something. But if they don't say anything, then the decree will continue its validity. Yeah, I mean, a lot of this is dramatic and revolutionary to fix Argentina's economy, at least to get it out of the mess it's in right now, to lower those inflation numbers, to get it on a reasonable path of economic growth. Is this enough? Good. Yeah. So I think that that's also a very good question, because in these three areas that I tried to put, the second two parts, the big day regulation and changes in education, et cetera, I think those are structural changes, long-run ideas for the country to grow, to become very efficient, to become very productive, and to make us rich, like seriously rich, in 20 or 30 years. And I think if those ideas became the law, I'm confident that that will happen. But what do we need to reduce inflation, to bring a bit more normalcy, stability at least for Argentinians? Then we need the first plan, the fiscal adjustment, and the liberalization of prices, which is also included in this first path, because, for example, the dollar has been devaluated. I mean, well, the peso rate to the dollar, we are paying officially the official market, the official rate for the dollar is now 800 pesos. It used to be 350. Of course, there is a black market rate for the dollar, which is around a thousand. So the difference is still not zero. Should be zero, we should have like a totally free market for the dollar. But we're getting there. And now in these two months to come, or three months to come, we will see the impact of the liberalization of some specific prices in the economy that can be deregulated without decrease, without loss, just by a resolution by the Minister of Finance. We are seeing the dollar, the official dollar went up. Medical insurance fees are going way up. Food in the supermarket is going up, and gas in the gas station has gone crazy up, like more than 150 percent in the last month. But that's because we had an extensive and very, it lasted very long, a system of price control and price cap caps. And the economy was not tolerating this anymore. I mean, we had gas shortages. All the medical, private system is not working well. We have shortages of doctors. There is a lot of people waiting in the private hospitals. And that's all because of this system of interventionism. So we will have a huge burst of inflation in the coming three or four months. But then they have the fiscal plan. They are balancing the budget very aggressively, like no government did before. They are freezing the amount of money being printed to finance the deficit. And I would say that in two or three months, they will even give us a monetary regime. I would say a fixed exchange rate or even a path to dollarization, something like that, that will be even better for expectations towards inflation. So I think that inflation will start going down quickly as soon as we pass these three or four months of adjustment. Yeah, exactly. So you still expect him to suggest, you still expect him to propose dollarization or something similar to dollarization? I think he will do it. It's a hard question to answer. It's a very hard proposal from his campaign. But also this pragmatism and these new people coming to government who are not the ones who were there from moment zero and they didn't like dollarization in the first place. I mean, nobody else than Millet and his party is in favor of dollarization. So there's a dilemma here between Millet, the demand, the ideologue, the libertarian, the one who thinks that the truth solution for inflation is the elimination of the central bank, the Austrian economist. There's a dilemma. There's a tension between that guy and the guy who needs to run a country with a coalition in which no one believes in dollarization. But I need also to mention that his minister of finance is not an openly a detractor of dollarization. There was a famous paper that he wrote in the private sector in May last year when, even though he didn't actively defend the dollarization and wrote that it had many problems to be implemented, that he didn't think that it was a crazy idea and that given the circumstances of Argentina, we may explore the idea. So if that gets together with the Millet that wants to really eliminate the central bank, I'm thinking that what can happen is during these months, there is a transition. The government devalued the currency. Now the central bank is being able to buy dollars in the market. They are accumulating some reserves. And one of the problems of dollarizing according to the now minister of finance was, you don't have any dollar. How can you dollarize? But what are they doing now? They are getting dollars. So maybe they are getting dollars in order to dollarize. And I think one of the first things you could do in order to dollarize is to fix the exchange rate. Let's say in three months the exchange rate is 1300 pesos to a dollar. Well, you can fix it there and then you get some time in order to get more dollars and then you dollarize. So I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, but I think it's a possibility still. And I guess they also have to renegotiate a lot of the debt, the dollar-denominated debt that Argentina has with the World Bank and... With the IMF? Yeah, IMF, sorry, the IMF. Yeah, with the IMF. But here's the funny thing with the IMF. The IMF was asking the Argentine government to achieve in 2024. I think it was a budget deficit of 1% of GDP, a primary budget deficit of 1% of GDP. If Milay fiscal plan succeeds, we will end the year with 2% surplus. So Milay plans are much more ambitious than those of the IMF. That's why the IMF is so happy. They're like, oh, yeah, go ahead. That's fine.