“Everything solid vanishes into air”they said Marx y Engels in it communist manifesto to refer to the destructive and transformative power of capitalism with respect to social structures and traditional values. The instability of societies is a new constant. The truth is that doubts reappear about the sustainability of the “economic summer” of the first post-election weeks in Argentina, with a decline in the dollar and country risk. In this case, that which already seems to begin to fade was never “solid.”
This Thursday at the last minute, the news that was gaining strength in previous days was confirmed, regarding the fall of “Plan Brady 2.0”that is, the loan that was negotiated Luis Caputo con international banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup for US$ 20,000 million. The American newspaper The Wall Street Journal This was confirmed by sources close to the negotiations, while the banks were not receiving the support they expected from the United States Treasury.
Now the sum is reduced to the search of a desperate US$5 billion in the form of short-term “Repo”to continue supporting with patches the delicate financial situation of the country. Caputo's "plan" would now be to achieve this disbursement from the banks to achieve a sufficient reduction in the country riskwhich allows it to issue more foreign debt and thus promise a quick return. "However, the entities would be exposed if market conditions deteriorate and the country fails to place new securities or obtain other sources of financing," the Wall Street newspaper warned. This Thursday, The country risk rose again 6% to 657 points.
This does not mean the end, far from it. “There is no need to discount the ability that the Government has shown to achieve short-term schemes to kick the critical moment, one after another,” the economist from the National University of the South tells this newspaper, Franciso Cantamutto.
The “illusion” of the cheap dollar
Since the elections the price of the dollar began to decline. The wholesaler went from touching $1,492 in the run-up to 26O to descending to a floor of $1,387 this Monday, from where it rose again relatively to $1,425 at the close of this short week. Just an effect of post-electoral certainty? No, There was also a greater supply of dollarswhich did not come from an improvement in the current account (which is still in deficit), nor from a “rain of investments” (negative) nor from greater indebtedness of the National State.
The dollar offer came from a growing and surprising debt of large companies that operate in the country for about US$3,000 million, and around US$600 million provincial debtparticularly from the CABA government.
Son “imported dollars”, that allowed a stabilization of the currency price (“paxchangeria”) and the withdrawal of pesos from the North American Treasury with an enormous profit, but that They barely allowed the Argentine Treasury to buy US$200 million since October 27. It is not enough to strengthen the reserves. Even less, to face the debt maturities of the next three months, for about US$6,000 million.
Added to this is that the Government must be accountable to its main guardian, the IMF. According to estimates of the consultant 1816, Argentina is US$13 billion away from the reserve accumulation goal agreed with the organization. This goal had already been made more flexible in the first review of the Extended Facilities Program. Therefore, “whatever happens between now and the end of 2025, we are moving towards negotiating a new waiver and new goals with the organization,” says the reference consulting firm for the markets.
Monetary phenomena are much more sensitive to social perception than productive phenomena. He government bet everything on keep the dollar low as a price anchoralthough the true anchor is the recession caused, falling salaries and the fall in consumption. Caputo's short-term alchemies to sustain the illusion of stability generated by the “cheap dollar” Not only are they tending to be explosive, but in their wake they destroy the productive fabric.
Between November 2023 and July 2025 18,032 companies closedan average of almost 30 per day. Among them around 1,500 are manufacturing companies and about 1,600 are construction companies. The effects are not only indirect due to the exchange rate scheme, the government aims directly, hand in hand with the deregulation of Sturzeneggerin favoring tendencies towards capitalist concentration in each market. It did so by destroying functions of regulatory bodies in regional economies such as the viticulture and yerba mate.
The productive annihilation already has its correlation in job lossalong with growing job insecurity in the context of the social crisis. In this same period, more than 253,728 registered jobs were lost, of which about 170,000 correspond to the private sector. More than 43,000 formal jobs were destroyed in the manufacturing industrywhich together with construction and mining add up to 130,000 fewer jobs in the production sector.
Salaries that are not enough lead to multiple employment, overtime, work intensification and self-exploitation, greater family debt, and pressures to replace the purchase of goods and services with care and domestic work that falls particularly on women and young people. A recent Indec report revealed that in the first half of 2025, one in four households requested loans and 50.9% bought in installments or on deposit.
The uberization of work The promise of the Government's labor reform only seeks to accentuate this suffocating situation. A very good note by Julio Pérez reveals that A Rappi delivery person must make more than 460 orders a month to cover the basic basketand it would even need 775 orders to cover the minimum needs of a family. The pedals can't reach.
Los great businessmen like Paolo Rocca (CEO of the Techint Group and representative of UIA) They barely question partial aspects of the import opening that affect their own businesses, without questioning the direction of the model as a whole and, in fact, pushing with Techint in the Ministry of Labor all the labor counter-reforms of big capital.
Before it's too late, a true productive sovereignty in the face of imperialist plunder and the primarizing aspirations of financial power will only come from the hand of workers organizationin defense of their jobs and for true centralization and transformation of the productive apparatus on a collective basis.
Short-termism at stake, is the “carry trade” returning?
The phenomenal “off shore” debt of companies abroad in these weeks raises the question regarding their purposes. Do they capitalize and invest in this context of uncertainty or will they seek to inject the dollars into a financial cycle?
“The carry trade scheme managed to be composed exclusively based on local fundsuntil now he has not managed to open the game to foreign portfolio investments or debt schemes, until now he has not succeeded, he has already been in office for two years without being able to open that door. And it is not clear that this will happen soon,” he explains. Francisco Cantamutto.
Considering the carry trade windows in these two millennium years, he points out that “in this short-term scheme he had the help of money laundering, the loan from the IMF and the North American Treasury, that is to say that the time periods are getting shorter and shorter.” Caputo will seek to take advantage of the winds of political support from the United States to extend the scheme of enormous financial profits in dollars for banks and privileged sectors in the summer.
“The carry trade scheme could open it, it is possible to think about it, in fact since the elections the exchange rate has been stabilized and in fact downwards, and cThe Treasury insurance behind it has the capacity to insure it in the short term. Of course this will not eliminate the instability inherent to the process which has been fueled by the lack of accumulation of reserves that would only be solved with a devaluation”, indicates Cantamutto.
In an interesting article by CIPHERPablo Manzanelli analyzes “why the financial valuation of Milei fails” and points out that since the Libertad Avanza government took office, four attempts to form bubbles of this type were launched. They gave returns in dollars that reached up to 18.5% per month, but they lasted “only” 3 to 5 months and with high volatility. The background to this is the impossibility of obtaining external financing, outside the IMF, that “sustains” these cycles of carry beyond the short term.
It is clear that the government does not have the slightest intention of accumulating “genuine” dollars through the trade balance. This is what the president of the Central Bank expressed, Santiago Bausili: "If the Treasury regains access to the market, the Central Bank will stop providing reserves for payments. Remonetization will be reflected in a greater stock of reserves. We should not force that pace. Some want to accumulate through the current account, but Argentina is one of the most closed economies in the world."
Hence Caputo's only strategy is permanent debtborrow (from the IMF, from international banks) with the promise of being able to borrow better tomorrow. But in the long run, everyone knows that you don't live in bubbles.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
