In this article we analyze how imbalances –GDP that went from growing around 17% annualized in the third quarter 2024 (Sturzenegger) to fall (-0.3%) in the second quarter 2025a accrued fiscal deficit that exceeds 3.5% of GDP, but increases its potential due to the conjunction of increased financial cost and falling collection, stagnant reserves, growing unemployment and real salaries in free fall- are the product of a scheme of financial policies imported from Wall Street, similar to that implemented in Macri management (2015-2018). Our hypothesis is that the current Argentine fragility responds to the structural dependence of international financing and the capture of the State for interests linked to the global financial system (Muchnik, 2005; Napoli, Perosino & Bosisio, 2014)
The monetary policy of the BCRA, based on the massive placement of Lebac and in exorbitant interest rateshe encouraged Carry Trade and the entrance of Capitals swallow Hot Money. However, this scheme quickly became unsustainable. The current account deficit reached US $ 35,000 million in 2017, while inflation exceeded official goals. The subsequent exchange rate of 2018 forced the government to resort to greater loan in the history of the IMF, of US $ D57,000 million (Only US $ 44.5 billion were disbursed, due to repeated breaches), whose social impact was devastating (IMF 2018).
This episode demonstrated the limits of a model based on financial speculation. As we point out in a timely manner, The tragedy of that period was not only the damage it caused, but its brutal similarity with the path undertaken by Mileisince December 2023.
State capture
In the present, the dynamics acquires a novel nuance with respect to the “Sweet Silver” (1978-1981) version, since 2016 it is not only the banks who guide the policies, but its exoperators directly occupy the key positions of the State. The Ministry of Economy, the BCRA and the Ministry of Economic Policy are under the conduct of profiles such as Luis Caputo or José Luis Daza, both with trajectories forged in JP Morgan and Wall Street.
The official contribute introduces the State a particular rationality, thinking about the economy as a futures market, reducing the social to “exogenous noise” and conceiving risk as an opportunity for arbitration. As Taleb observes (2004), this ethos tends to confuse chance with skill, which reinforces an overcrowding bias in decision making. In practice, economic policy is transformed into an “excel of bets”, in which social variables – employment, poverty, equity – are invisible externalities to government calculation.
The institutional consequence is deep. The Argentine State has been colonized by speculative logics that use public tools – type of change, fees, debt – as if they were their own instruments, privatizing profits and socializing losses.
The situation
The repetition of this pattern is reflected in the recent situation. The Government has faced multiple setbacks in Congress, which weakened its political negotiation capacity and increased the perception of institutional instability. At the same time, the markets recorded episodes of strong volatility; The stock hound rates reached intradiarium peaks of up to 150%, revealing dynamics of intra -speculation and the desperate intervention of the Central Bank to sustain the demand for weights (scope, 2025).
In parallel, imports from China grew by 80% year -on -year during the first semester, severely affecting the local industry, with a use of installed capacity in just 45% in the metallurgical sector (Argentine Industrial Union, 2025). The phenomenon of reprimand of exports deepened.
The official response to these tensions has not been a productive turn, but new negotiations to access external financing. Right now it is negotiated with the United States Treasury, a salvage. As in 2018, the solution is again more debt, without altering the speculative matrix of the model.
Continuities and ruptures
The comparison between both periods allows observing a clear continuity; The subordination of economic policy to the political needs of the US, IMF, financiers and traders. Both in 2016-2018 and in 2024-2025, the illusion of stability was based on volatile capitals, over-indebtedness and an artificially appreciated exchange rate.
The novelty lies in the naturalization of the trader figure as an official. As Boltanski and Chiapello (2002) show, capitalism is able to incorporate criticism and transform them into legitimacy. Today, the speech of “professionalism” and “technical expertise” of traders in power operates as a legitimacy mechanism, although their decisions replicate the same patterns of structural fragility.
The Argentine economy of 2025 exhibits signs of an unstable balance, sustained by extreme fiscal austerity, precarious financing and exchange volatility. Stability mirage hides A structural risk, having turned the State into an operations table, governed by short -term bets.
History is not an accident, but a design. As in the case of Barings Bank’s collapse, the system tolerates the illusion of profits until the magnitude of the losses becomes impossible to continue hiding them (Greener, 2006).
The warning is clear, while the country continues with financial arbitration logic, the outcome will not be a surprise, but the foreseeable consequence of a model that confuses speculation with politics.
The Milei government does not face an accidental but structural problem, the dependence on external financing, submission to the logic of international financial markets and the dogmatic application of imported recipes. Far from “releasing the economy”, the supposed libertarians reinforce the subordination of the country to international financing. The evidence shows that, as in the crises of 1981, 1989, 2001 and 2018, social results are unemployment, inequality and growing conflict. The salvage that Milei and Caputo expect will not come from the Argentine Congress but from the United States Treasuryconfirming once again that the economic authority continues to mortgage the future.
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References: Scope. (2025). Legislative setbacks and financial volatility in Argentina. Financial scope. International Monetary Fund. (2018). Argentina: Stand-by 2018-2021 Agreement. IMP Argentine Industrial Union. (2025). Industrial Report: Imports and installed capacity. UIA
Director of Esperanza Foundation. https://fundacionesperanza.com.ar/ UBA postgraduate professor and masters in private universities. Master in International Economic Policy, Doctor of Political Science, Author of 6 Books
Source: Ambito
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