It is always good to have an ally and advisor like Ramiro Marra, thirty-something son of the founder of the Bull Market broker (“bull market”, that is, rising price market) in Buenos Aires. Around his office, in a modern skyscraper in Puerto Madero, on the banks of the Río de la Plata, adorned with photos of the famous bronze bull of Wall Street, the young lynxes of the social networks of the new Argentine libertarian right swarm. They wear t-shirts with the slogan “Freedom, damn it.” Some ride a hoverboard model electric scooter.
If it were not for his youthful energy, Javier Milei, the candidate who usually defines himself as an anarcho-capitalist, would not be the favorite ten days before the first round of the elections in Argentina, which will be held this Sunday. Some skillfully manage the campaign on TikTok and Instagram with coups and more or less fake news to spread Milei's project to decimate the State, dollarize the economy and unleash the elemental forces of pure capitalism against the so-called "caste."
Marra, candidate for La Libertad Avanza, Milei's party, in the Buenos Aires legislative elections, takes advantage of his investment channel, Dólar Hoy, to support the libertarian's radical plan. “Don't save in pesos!” He defiantly announced last week, bold advice at a time of accelerated depreciation of the currency that has driven annual inflation up to 140%. Anything goes to viralize the central message: Milei is the disruptive candidate, the authentic punk rocker, although the rock group to which he belonged in his youth was limited to covering the Rolling Stones.
But the rebellious financiers and young network activists in Puerto Madero will not be enough for Milei to take power, at least in a lasting way. For that you need to have the support of bigger fish. Milei already caused astonishment when he announced a pact, of astonishing opportunism, with the union leader and clientelist politician Luis Barrionuevo, the robot portrait of that caste against which the candidate attacks.
But he also needs the support of big businessmen and financiers more established than Marra. Paradoxically, this can be more difficult. “Obviously, the economic elite views Milei's pro-market program very favorably,” said economist Fabián Amici, a technician at a development bank in Buenos Aires. “But there is a problem: many believe the guy is crazy.”
The misgivings are logical. The dollarization plan seems like a delirium given the absence of the necessary foreign currency to replace the national monetary mass. The proposal to close the central bank – taken from the anarcho-capitalism manuals of the eccentric American post-war economist Murray Rothbard – is, for most economists, a delusion.
Milei's iconic chainsaw – actually copied from a campaign by US Republican Senator Rand Paul – raises some fears that the businessmen and bankers themselves may also end up hacked to pieces in an Argentine version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. “Many businessmen are afraid,” Amici added in an interview at the Exedra cafeteria, in the center of Buenos Aires. Marra and other advisors of the candidate defend measures that “if adopted would lead us directly to hyperinflation.” Nor does the fact that, two years ago, Marra, a fan of cryptocurrencies like many of Milei's followers, help to calm the nerves of businessmen, predicted on the Dólar Hoy website that bitcoin would reach $100,000 (now it oscillates around the 20,000).
This explains the trip that Milei made at the beginning of the month to the beach city of Mar del Plata, where Colloquio Idea is organized, the most important business event of the year, a sort of Argentine Davos.
Unlike his two main rivals in the presidential elections, the center-left Peronist Sergio Massa and the conservative Patricia Bullrich, Milei refused to participate publicly in the conference, aware that it could damage his image as an outsider. “Coloquio Idea never treats me well,” she protested. But she did decide to meet privately with the businessmen in a restaurant whose name perfectly summed up the tone of Milei's campaign: Fury.
Some seventy businessmen and financiers attended the event organized by Milei's most powerful ally among the financial class, Juan Napoli, president of Banco de Valores, who managed to attract people such as Cristino Rattazzi, former president of Fiat Argentina; Daniel Funes, from the powerful business association Unión Industrial Argentina, and two executives from Richmond Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company that manufactured the Russian Sputnik vaccine. Financiers from Banco de Galicia, Cohen, financial allies and the former CEO of HSBC in the country also attended.
But Milei did little to dispel fears in his speech at the Furia restaurant. She insisted on the viability of her most anarcho-capitalist ideas: “Closing the central bank is an immovable measure.” She also insisted that the rapid depreciation of the peso is not a problem: “The higher the dollar, the easier it will be to dollarize.” According to direct witnesses, the attending businessmen were not very convinced.
In a very Argentine paradox, the elite that, by social class logic, should support Milei is preparing a capital flight. “Many people are already putting their capital in liquid assets, in dollars, so they can get it out if Milei wins in the first round,” Amici said. A banker at the Mar del Plata colloquium, consulted by the newspaper Página Doce, summarized the dilemma: “Milei's vision is shared by all of us; The issue is how to do it.”
