In a context of growing exchange voltage, with the official dollar brushing the roof of the band established by the Central Bank – and the entity with a selling position – and the Blue climbing above $ 1,450, the interview granted by Joaquín Cottani To Maximiliano Montenegro in the last hours, sheds light on the inmates of the economic team led by the minister Luis Caputo. The former Deputy Minister of Economy, who left his position in June 2024 for discrepancies in exchange policy, said precisely how Caputo presented Javier Milei a scheme to administer the policy with the dollar “Without the need to accumulate reservations in the Central Bank”a proposal that Cottani describes as “inconsistent”.
This revelation of Cottani coincided with a recent post in X of Caputo himself, where, when responding to a journalist, he sincere the official strategy that the government will apply, by confessing that the treasure will no longer buy dollars, something that could weaken the expectation of investors for the future payment of the debt: “Hello. The Central Bank only buys dollars in the band’s floor. The treasure can buy at any time, as it did. We bought 3 billion somewhat below 1200. At the current price, the treasure no longer buys and on the band’s roof, the Central Bank buys weights to absorb them and reduce exchange volatility. Hug.”
For Cottani, this approach reflects a plan “Chimeric, impracticable”who, as confessed, tried to explain to the IMF without success: “Minister Caputo said there was no need to have reservations. I wanted to write this in a Paper to understand the bottom, because the background was more lost than me.”
The plan, according to the former official, is Caputo’s work, who “He gave him the solution that Milei was looking for”but it lacks livelihoods in an economy with negative net controls and reserves
Cottani, an economist with trajectory in international institutions and aligned with more traditional visions, explained that his departure from the government was fundamentally due to the refusal of the team to actively intervene in the exchange market to buy dollars when the exchange rate was undervalued. “I insisted that you had to accumulate reservations in the BCRA, intervene to buy dollars when the exchange rate was cheap”he said, but the recurring answer was that “The market solves it alone”. This obsession with non -intervention, according to Cottani, represents a “Manual error” that has left the country with negative net reserves around -10,000 million dollars, a level that compromises medium -term stability.
The declaration of Caputo in X, which limits the purchases of the BCRA to the band of the band and stops those of the Treasury at current prices, reinforces this criticism, evidencing a strategy that prioritizes the absorption of weights in the roof of the band on the accumulation of reserves, something that Cottani considers insufficient to guarantee stability.
To avoid a crisis in 2026, Cottani emphasized the urgency of accumulating at least US $ 5,000 million before the end of the year, a goal that requires an active intervention policy, contrary to the current government position.
The core of revelation lies in how Caputo designed a plan that, according to Cottani, responds to the “Delusa” Milei theorists, such as endogenous dollarization, where dollars would automatically enter via exports without the need for reservations such as support. This vision, “Influenced by Austrian readings such as Hayek and Mises that Milei cited in internal meetings, ignores the inherited fiscal unbalance and the reality of an economy with exchange controls”. Cottani narrated revealing anecdotes: in discussions with the IMF, Milei insisted that “Inflation is just a monetary problem”while Caputo mediated but prioritized libertarian ideology over orthodoxy. “Once, Caputo told me: ‘Joaquín, you are too orthodox for this government'”he recalled, highlighting differences with figures such as Federico Sturzenegger in the debate between shock and gradualism.
The exchange band regime, an “invention”
The exchange band regime, implemented to avoid an explicit devaluation, was qualified by Cottani as an unsustainable “invention” without active interventions. Without them, the blue dollar shoots and the stock – which proposes completely more flexible instead of maintaining a confusing “medium” – perpetuates uncertainty. The former official warned that The current plan, focused on the initial fiscal discipline (which praises for its rigor), is viable only to the 2025 electionssince inflation stabilizes in the short term but requires rethinking post-electorily before the external deficit aggravated by drought and fall in exports. For a genuine dollarization, he insisted, twin surpluses (fiscal and external) and solid reserves such as “backing” are needed, elements absent in the current scheme, which he describes as a “new inconsistent theory” invented by Caputo to avoid the remumination in pesos through purchases of dollars, something that Milei rejected for ideological principles.
Cottani also criticized the according to the IMF as “wet paper” Without deep structural reforms, and extended a direct advice to Milei: “Fiscal discipline is key, but without reservations there is no monetary independence. We intervene already, or the market will force us with a run.”
These statements, which expose a “rewriting” of macroeconomy to fit the official story, highlight the risks of an approach where ideology prevails over empirical evidence, at a time when the market already shows signs of distrust with the country risk above 1200 points.
Source: Ambito
