Argentinian here: we have absolutely nothing to show for it and yet people keep voting the right.
and yet people keep voting the right
What would you say is the reason why that keeps happening?
I once saw a Milei interview on YouTube. It was from before he became president. He went on a deranged tirade about how "the central bank are thieves" without explaining why. In the comments, a British guy was commenting about how wise he was.
The interview where he was spouted this nonsense and the "interviewer" just sat there nodding in agreement reminded me of India's news media of today. Billionaires have an unopposed and total control of TV news channels and newspapers which then do uncritical PR for their favoured political party of their patrons (mostly BJP) and most of the "news" has devolved into an electoral circus where the "news" is concerned with what this and that politician said about an event rather then the event itself.
The billionaires that own these news outlets welcome imperialists plundering their motherland as long they get a cut from it. I reckon it should be similar in Argentina.
The interview where he was spouted this nonsense and the "interviewer" just sat there nodding in agreement reminded me of India's news media of today. Billionaires have an unopposed and total control of TV news channels and newspapers which then do uncritical PR for their favoured political party of their patrons (mostly BJP) and most of the "news" has devolved into an electoral circus where the "news" is concerned with what this and that politician said about an event rather then the event itself.
As a USian, this sounds very familiar
I don't think there's a unique cause this happens. Different people will have different motives. Having said this, some causes are:
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Anti-peronism. As shown in the last election, there's like 20-25% of the people that will vote for whatever opposes the Peronist party.
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Social media, especially tiktok. Milei has been extremely successful conquering that space, so younger generations just get excited to see some "radical change".
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Perceived corruption of the peronist party. I won't say this isn't real, but I don't think it's as bad as most people think. Also, all corruption concerns fly out the window once a right wing guy is in the government.
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Traditional media. We have our own version of Fox News, which is also quite successful at appearing neutral to these that can't criticize what they consume.
Some people also overfocus in whatever feel is the current issue, two examples.
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People worried about inflation remember fondly the 90s, despite unemployment getting close to 20%.
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People worried about crime will remember fondly the last dictatorship because "you could walk safely at night". This last one is especially false, because every statistic shows that Argentina isn't an insecure country and it was the military that could kill you at night without consequences.
This seems to be the source: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/balmov2.aspx?type=TOTAL
But the outstanding amount seems to be in SDRs (Special Drawing Rights). They list SDR valuations in various currencies here: https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/data/rms_sdrv.aspx
According to this, 1 SDR is about $1.3237.
So looks like Argentina owes (30987500000×1.3237 ≈) $41 billion instead.
So it's even worse than it appears.
I have to wonder, at what point will a country finally have the guts to say they refuse to continue to acknowledge the legitimacy of this debt? Afghanistan for instance could easily just come out and tell the IMF to go fuck themselves. The US already stole all their sovereign reserves. What are they going to do, invade again just to get humiliated by the Taliban a second time?
Sankara said this in one of his speeches to some union of African countries. I saw it in The Upright Man documentary. He said that if they collectively default then the debts would mean nothing.
He said that if they collectively default then the debts would mean nothing.
No wonder they killed him. People having such ideas are meeting quick and brutal end since the Gracchi brothers.
Their pre-approval was massively inflated. Thats what happens when you name your country after a precious metal.
Crazy how many things are named after metals, just the other day I realized Plumber and the latin word for lead Plumbum were related, and the horrifying tangent being all pipes for most of history were made with lead and thus Plumber is just lead worker, and the title carries that history despite modernly being associated with Mario and more than enough sexual innuendos. Wild.
Yes but it's not sorted by it, so potentially we are missing out on some very small economies that might not make the top ten by total debt but would have a high debt to GDP ratio.
Yeah, meant globally though, so top 5 countries by % of their GDP as debt. Could've expressed that more clearly, sorry.
I haven't been able to find that but here's the comprehensive list showing IMF debt by country:
https://www.imf.org/external/np/fin/tad/balmov2.aspx?type=TOTAL
It should be a trivial if slightly tedious exercise to look up each country's GDP, make a spreadsheet, divide each country's debt by its GDP and then sort the list by that ratio.
Went ahead and did it:
Source for GDP estimates was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Top 5:
- Sierra Leone, 7.61%
- Central African Republic, 7.46%
- Barbados, 5.97%
- Suriname, 5.62%
- Argentina, 5.13%
By the way notice how on this entire list there is not a single "western" country. The vast majority are from the global south, with the only exceptions being a handful of former Yugoslav and Soviet republics. "Western" countries have plenty of debt but none of it to the IMF.
So what this list effectively shows is the degree to which these countries are still under the colonial subjugation of the West. If you are in debt to the IMF it is very difficult if not impossible to have sovereign control over your own economic policies, and therefore to be able to say that you are a sovereign country.
This makes it very clear that colonialism never ended. There are few actually independent countries in the world today outside of the collective West (which itself really only consists of the imperial hegemon and its various satellites and vassals). Notice how countries like China, Russia, DPRK, Iran are not on this list.
It is no coincidence that of those that are still truly independent most are in some way or another in the crosshairs of the empire.
Of course, if you want to enter into debt with no strings attached (no such thing, but let's just say minimal strings attached) you don't go to the IMF. The IMF is the loan shark of the world. Makes the claims that China is doing "imperialism" so completely absurd when you put BRI next to the IMF and the World Bank. Also, if you just read Lenin for a little bit, you'll realize there's an enormous difference between the myopic, manipulative activities that Western colonialist finance capitalists are doing, vs the long term mutual development plans China is putting into action.
It is interesting to see Argentina and Ecuador among the top 10. Especially, after knowing the context behind those countries...