In full 2025, Javier Milei’s economic experiment generates as much expectation as fear. While the markets celebrate certain fiscal equilibrium and the “nominal anchor” of the official exchange rate, the real economy shows signs of rising asphyxiation. The abrupt increase in the delinquency of the financial system, the record of rejected checks and the paralysis in the productive credit begin to configure an alarming picture: an economy in financial distress.
The phenomenon is not new. Argentina has lived this process in 1981, in 2001 and in 2018, three different crises in appearance, but with common patterns: indebtedness, exchange delay, destruction of business margins and a capital escape that, sooner or later, precipitates the mass bankruptcy of companies and a systemic disruption. This article proposes a comparative and predictive exercise: what did we learn from those crises and why do we run the risk of repeating them in 2025?
Argentina 1981: The Trap of La Tabita
During the last military dictatorship, the then Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz designed a stabilization plan based on a programmed exchange appreciation, known as the “Tablo”. The model, which allegedly sought to anchor expectations, encouraged private indebtedness in dollars while income followed in pesos. When the regime collapsed, the devaluation was brutal and many companies could not deal with their dollarized liabilities.
As Basualdo (2006) describes, the 1981 crisis resulted in a “socialization of private debt”, where the State absorbed the losses of the financial sector. On the business level, the combination of active interest rates, positive real and artificial exchange rate led to a wave of bankruptcies. The bank delinquency shot and the productive credit was paralyzed for years.
Argentina 2001: default, pesification and systemic collapse
Twenty years later, Argentina repeated logic with its convertibility regime. Throughout the 1990s, companies and families borrowed in dollars, convinced that 1 to 1 was immodifiable. However, the combination of recession, fiscal deficit and dependence on external financing became unsustainable the model. The exit of the regime was chaotic: sovereign default, asymmetric pesification, confiscation of deposits and a social collapse.
As illustrated by the CTI case, even companies with positive operational results (positive Ebitda) could not avoid default due to their foreign currency over -debt (CTI had US $ 1 billion of debt compared to an EBITDA of US $ 60 million). The restructuring was inevitable, and only those firms that managed to renegotiate or were absorbed by new capitals with external support were survived.
Argentina 2018: The return to the IMF and the Carry Trade trap
In the Government of Mauricio Macri, the illusion of cheap external financing led to a new overexposure to debt in dollars. He bet on the entrance of Capitals swallow via rates in pesos (Carry Trade) while the Central Bank intervened to maintain the stable exchange rate. The 2018 run revealed the vulnerability of the model: without sufficient reservations and with increasing maturities, Argentina returned to the International Monetary Fund for a record rescue of US $ 57,000 million.
The closure of the international credit implied a strong devaluation and a new corporate debt crisis. Companies that had issued negotiable obligations in dollars to finance working capital or expansion were trapped by the country’s risk, capital escape and the impossibility of refinancing maturity (Rapaport, 2019).
Argentina 2025: The déjà vu of the extreme adjustment
Today, under the government of Javier Milei, Argentina experiences another twist to the tax adjustment. The primary deficit has been virtually eliminated, but at the cost of a deep recession. According to data from the Central Bank, credit in credit cards reached 2.8% in March, the highest level in three years, and that of personal loans reached 4.1%, the largest in nine months. The number of rejected checks exceeded 64,000 in April, a record from the 2020 pandemic, with a rejection rate of 1.3%.
The financial system begins to show signs of saturation. As Rossi and Olivera Doll (2025) point out, banks are hardening their granting criteria and companies face a liquidity drowning that interrupts the payment chain. The news of corporate defaults return: the Grobo in Default, Albanesi breaches interest, Argentine cellulose warns about Default and San Miguel cancels debt emissions.
Predictive models and bankruptcy signs
The technical analysis also contains alerts. As Rizzo (2014) emphasizes, insolvency states can be defined at three levels: patrimonial, illiquidity or due to the disability of future repayment (discounted flow). Applying the RPV prediction model (Mosqueda et al., 2014), the simultaneous deterioration of liquidity ratios, operational margin and interest coverage allows anticipating an increase in the systemic risk of bankruptcies, especially in SMEs exposed to short -term bank credit.
Empirical evidence shows that many Argentine companies no longer manage to cover their financial costs with current income, falling into what literature calls “snowball” debt.
Restructuring or collapse: the pending dilemma
History teaches that when the State does not articulate early restructuring mechanisms, the market adjusts by destruction. In 2001, thousands of companies entered default, many without access to the competition regime. Today, the level of informality and the shortage of credit create a similar scenario. The bankruptcy and bankruptcy law is still valid, but few access it for costs and times. The alternative – private re -structuring or directly removes – does not appear on the official agenda, concentrated in the fiscal surplus as an absolute objective.
The CiT Case experience showed that a successful restructuring requires strategic vision, intelligent alliances and critical execution capacity. None of this seems to be present in the current government, which despises planning and blindly trusts the “spontaneous order” of the market.
Outcome
The parallels with 1981, 2001 and 2018 are not casual. In all cases, an economic policy disconnected from productive reality generated a process of over -indebtedness, destruction of margins, collapse of credit and mass bankruptcies. Today, the Argentine of Javier Milei advances towards a new edge of the abyss, repeating errors that already had an immense social and economic cost. The warning lights are on: if the course is not changed, 2025 could be remembered as the year of a new great financial implosion. This time, without a network.
References:
- Basualdo, E. (2006). Political system and accumulation model in Argentina: notes on the period 1955-2002. FLACSO, CAS CASE. (2003); CTI salvage. Harvard Business School, FIN-C-0470-UC-00-S; Mosqueda, RM, Sánchez Trujillo, MG, & García Vargas, Mle (2014), Prediction Model for Bankruptcy in Micro and Small Enterprises, FIR Magazine, Faedpyme International Review, 5 (3), 10-18; Olivera Doll, I. (2025, June 4), Rising delinquency and bounced checks: the alert faced by Milei. Bloomberg; Rapaport, M. (2019) Argentine external debt: a recurring history. Buenos Aires: 21st century; Rizzo, MM (2014). Financial Restructuring of Companies.
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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