MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CFK: The Libertarians' zero deficit is a fabrication

Milei “lives in a world that no longer exists,” CFK argued

Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015 / CFK) said during an interview on the internet streaming channel Gelatina outside mainstream media that the Liberal administration's “fiscal surplus is increasingly trumped up.”

Hence, what President Javier Milei and Economy Minister Luis Toto Caputo boast as a milestone achievement would be nothing short of a fabrication. “The fiscal surplus is more and more a fraud,” CFK stressed in her first appearance after the parliamentarian passing of the so-called Bases Law around which the ruling party's economic plan is said to hinge.

“The energy companies are asking to be paid and the provinces are not paying anything, zero pesos; they do not buy food; they do not buy medicines; they suspended 3,000 public works and, therefore, their payment, so it is trumped up, but besides being trumped up, it is unsustainable,” CFK argued about Milei's government.

The incumbent President “is only supported by capital, because he proposes unusual things, which would not be working,” CFK also explained when addressing the so-called Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI) with which Milei intends to lure large-size investors (mostly from abroad) at the expense of local SMEs. However, CFK made it clear that she did not want Milei's plan “to fail” but insisted corrections were needed. It remained to be seen whether they would be implemented by Milei or by somebody else.

Regarding Milei's foreign policy, CFK stressed that “we cannot continue thinking that the threat is communism, because you seem dissociated from reality. I hope facts will prevail.” Milei is clinging to “a world that no longer exists,” CFK pointed out.

In CFK's view, Argentina's main problem is not the deficit, but “the lack of dollars and indebtedness.” And with the RIGI no dollars will be arriving shortly besides those the agricultural sector might provide. “The only one who thinks that the problem is the deficit is the President,” the populist leader who also completed a term as Vice President on Dec. 9, 2023, under Alberto Fernández, also told interviewer Pedro Rosemblat.

“The market knows how to add up and knows that there are zero dollars. The problem is the shortage and the debt. The maturities that are coming...,” she added while noting that the lack of dollars is not compensated with the surplus Milei repeatedly highlights.

“At times when the tectonic plates of currencies begin to move, people go to gold as a sure thing. In that world, we cannot continue thinking that the threat is communism, because you seem dissociated from reality. The facts will force us to get in touch with reality,” CFK also forecasted. The BRICS (the multinational group Argentina refused to join under Milei after being invited to during the previous administration) “is going to start leaving the dollar and the Arabs are already trading without dollars,” CFK also noted.