Latest news with #Javier Milei
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Milei Wins Second Upgrade by Moody's on Easing FX Controls
(Bloomberg) -- Argentina's credit rating was upgraded by Moody's Ratings for a second time this year, with the agency citing the easing of currency controls and support from the International Monetary Fund. The Dutch Intersection Is Coming to Save Your Life Advocates Fear US Agents Are Using 'Wellness Checks' on Children as a Prelude to Arrests LA Homelessness Drops for Second Year Manhattan, Chicago Murder Rates Drop in 2025, Officials Say Moody's raised the country's credit score by two notches, to Caa1 from Caa3, on par with Egypt and Suriname, according to a statement on Thursday. The nation's outlook was changed to stable from positive. The upgrade comes amid President Javier Milei's attempts to transform South America's second-largest economy. Strategists and analysts alike have lauded the libertarian's efforts to tamp down rampant inflation and reverse years of endemic budget deficits. 'The upgrade reflects the decrease in the risk of a credit event, as the gradual lifting of foreign exchange restrictions enables a transition toward a more robust foreign exchange regime anchored on building international reserve buffers,' Moody's said in a note. Milei's policies have brought price increases to less than 2% a month, with annual inflation now at its lowest since 2020. He's also put the country on track for a primary surplus in 2025, the first in over 15 years, easing the debt burden. The economy returned to growth this year, expanding 7.7% in April, more than expected. But Wall Street has cautioned that despite a new IMF program and more liberal exchange regime, Milei and his team need to amass more hard-currency reserves, something that authorities have pledged they won't do until the peso trades at around a level of 1,000 per dollar. It is currently above 1,200. Another chief concern is whether Milei manages to expand his legislative support during midterm elections later this year. The vote is a key test of support for the administration's harsh belt-tightening campaign. Argentina's dollar bonds underperformed their peers on Thursday before the upgrade was announced, with notes maturing in 2035 losing 0.6 cents on the dollar to trade at around 64 cents, according to indicative pricing data compiled by Bloomberg. The notes now yield 11.94%. Moody's Ratings lifted Argentina's credit score one notch to Caa3 in January, and raised the outlook to positive from stable. Fitch Ratings then raised the nation to CCC+ from CCC in May. S&P Global Ratings affirmed its CCC rating in early February. --With assistance from Nicolle Yapur. (Updates with inflation figures in the fifth paragraph, bond prices in the eighth) How Starbucks' CEO Plans to Tame the Rush-Hour Free-for-All What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy Forget DOGE. Musk Is Suddenly All In on AI The Quest for a Hangover-Free Buzz How Hims Became the King of Knockoff Weight-Loss Drugs ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
National Post
5 days ago
- Business
- National Post
J.D. Tuccille: The remarkable triumph of Javier Milei
It's possible that no politician has defied the expectations of the chattering class as successfully as has Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei. Expected to remain in political obscurity, he rose to lead a political movement. Anticipated to lose a presidential election to a candidate from the country's dominant authoritarian political party, he won. And predicted by a cabal of academic economists to lead Argentina to ruin with free-market policies, he instead turned around the long-suffering country, resulting in lower inflation and rapid economic growth. Article content Article content Argentines have decades of experience with making bad choices and suffering their consequences, but this time they may have broken that unfortunate pattern by electing leadership that wants the state to take a back seat to individuals and private effort. Article content Article content Article content Drawing on official data, Reuters reports that Argentina's 'economic activity rose 7.7 per cent in April compared with the same month last year.' That was higher than expected and a welcome addition to news that the economy had grown by 5.8 per cent during the full first quarter relative to the same quarter the previous year. Early numbers put Argentina's second-quarter growth at 7.6 per cent. By contrast, Canada's economy grew at an annual 2.2 percent in the first quarter and the U.S. economy shrank a bit. In equally encouraging news, Argentina's 'monthly inflation rate has fallen below two per cent for the first time in five years,' according to the Financial Times. That's still high in North American terms, but Argentina's governments have a history of wildly expanding the money supply to pay off debt and finance expenditures, resulting in inflation rates in the hundreds and even thousands per cent per year. Inflation slowed somewhat in recent years, but it was over 200 per cent in 2023 and Milei was elected on a promise to stabilize prices — even if it meant adopting the U.S. dollar as the country's official currency. Article content Article content Importantly, the poverty rate in Argentina has also fallen to 38.1 per cent of the population at the end of 2024 from 41.7 per cent when Milei took office. Again, that remains very high, but it's an improvement in a country where politicians have long seemed committed to keeping people poor and dependent on the state. Article content Article content This wasn't supposed to happen. In a November 2023 open letter, over 100 economists warned that Milei's economic 'proposals, rooted in the economy of laissez-faire and which include controversial ideas such as dollarization and significant reductions in public spending, are fraught with risks that make them potentially very harmful to the Argentine economy and people.' Article content The economists — including such academic luminaries as Thomas Piketty and Jayati Ghosh — warned of havoc if Milei implemented his free-market plans. Voters weren't impressed by the forecast of doom; they chose the self-described 'anarcho-capitalist' economist and his upstart political coalition over the standard-bearer of the dominant Justicialist Party.
Bloomberg
5 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Milei's Rift With His Vice President Now ‘Undoubtedly a Crisis'
The relationship between Argentine leader Javier Milei and his No. 2 reached a breaking point after Vice President Victoria Villarruel imperiled the most important tenet of his economic program, a key lieutenant said. 'That is undoubtedly a crisis — not an institutional one, but a political crisis — within the government,' Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos told local television channel DNews in a clip aired Wednesday afternoon. 'There is a rift between the president of the nation and the vice president.'
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Argentina's Milei told to 'grow up' by VP in public spat over pensions
Argentine President Javier Milei and his vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, have engaged in a bitter public war of words over plans to increase shared posts on X in which his running mate had been called "stupid" and described as "a traitor", and in response Villarruel told the president to "grow up".The president's anger was triggered by a heavy defeat in Congress on Thursday, when the Senate approved motions aimed at boosting pensions and increasing disability allowances - which Milei had vehemently said he would veto the pension hike, arguing that the extra expenditure threatened his fiscal surplus, and blamed Villarruel for allowing the vote to proceed. In Argentina, the country's vice-president also acts as the president of the Senate. It was in this role as Senate leader that Villarruel allowed the debate on the emergency pension hike to proceed, even though senators allied with the government boycotted the session. With government-aligned senators absent, the motion passed with 52 votes in favour and four abstentions. Its backers argue that higher payments are essential in order for pensioners to make ends President Milei says it goes counter to his promise to eliminate Argentina's chronic fiscal deficit and bring down inflation. In January, Milei scored a major economic victory when it emerged that 2024 was the first year in more than a decade that Argentina had registered a budget month also saw the country's monthly inflation rate drop to 1.5%, the lowest it has been in more than five the austerity measures that helped the libertarian president lower the deficit and drive down inflation have also triggered protests, with pensioners holding weekly rallies outside Congress. Following the approval of the motion on Thursday, President Milei was quick to announce that he would block the pension hike."I bet a hundred thousand to one that you all know what I'm going to do. You know what? We're going to veto it. And if, by some chance, which I don't believe will happen, but if the veto is overturned, we will take it to court," he said. But he also turned on his vice-president, reposting a comment on X in which she was labelled a "traitor, a demagogue and stupid in economic terms". Villarruel responded on Instagram arguing that pensioners and people with disabilities "could not wait" any longer for their payments to be raised and suggested the president should make savings by spending less on the intelligence services and on his travels. Since becoming president in December 2023, Milei has travelled abroad one of the most publicised events, he wielded the chainsaw which has become emblematic of his government cuts before handing it to Elon Musk at the US Conservative Political Action also urged the president "to speak and act like an adult" in responses she gave her critics on Instagram.
