News of headlines

Completing memory

28-03-2026 05:55 It should be well within the means of libertarians (at all odds with dictatorship in theory at least) to challenge the denialist tag often placed on them and one wonders why they do not make more effort to do so.

by Michael Soltys

50th anniversary of 1976 coup

Anniversary recall

21-03-2026 00:06 Inviting people to recall their own memories of the 1976 coup excludes around 85 percent of the population – the others have to steer a tricky course between dogmatic echo chambers and broader perspectives.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

No inertia with Persia

14-03-2026 06:46 The 90 million Persians are very self-consciously not Arabs – ethnically, they are Indo-European, not Semitic while their Farsi language is fairly unintelligible for speakers of Arabic, far less overlap than, say, between Russian and Polish.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

A future which works

07-03-2026 06:53 Milei’s determination to open up one of the world’s most closed economies is moving at vastly superior speed to the painstaking parliamentary passage of the structural reforms local companies need to compete.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Ironies of FATE

28-02-2026 06:05 Tensions between the liberal right and the nationalistic right could start to make themselves felt here.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Stupid cupid – an $LIBRA of love

14-02-2026 06:41 Exactly one year ago today the first black swan came along after probably the longest presidential honeymoon in Argentine history.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Lies, damned lies and statistics

07-02-2026 00:04 The blow to confidence from this institutionally messy political interference in the formation of statistics (even if child’s play compared to the Kirchnerite fudging of the figures) remains to be seen.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Rocker versus Rocca and a deal with steel appeal

31-01-2026 06:50 How did an exclusively private tender become such a political football and why should there be much to choose between the tubing of an Argentine multinational flogging Brazilian steel and an Indian competitor hawking Chinese steel?

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

The forgotten reform

24-01-2026 00:17 Central to the passage of Milei's labour reform is the assent of the provincial governors controlling the deputies and senators needed to take the ruling party to an overall parliamentary majority.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Is Vaca Muerta now a dead cow – and EU-Mercosur deal a cherubic baby?

17-01-2026 00:12 Today will go down as a historic day with the world’s biggest free-trade area numbering over 700 million consumers signed into being in the Paraguayan capital of Asunción.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Fracas in Caracas

10-01-2026 06:43 Whisking Maduro from a heavily guarded Caracas military base to a New York courtroom was also an almost magical feat but has yet to prove a game-changer in Venezuelan history. If Bolivarian 21st-century socialism could outlive Hugo Chávez, it could also survive Maduro.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Midterms North and South

05-04-2025 06:48 Midterm results have tended to be adverse in both the United States and Argentina, from a government standpoint. In the former, a mere two of those 10 contests have gone the way of the presidential party – in the latter, the margin is narrower.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Towards a smarter state

29-03-2025 06:11 The libertarian government seems intent on cutting back a bloated state to its right size without having any clear idea what that size might be.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

'Cepo' in review

22-03-2025 07:53 It might well be argued that the ‘cepo,’ the seemingly endless set of currency and capital controls, has been a bane of Argentina’s existence.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

The Ides of March

15-03-2025 07:21 While conspiracy theories are wildly fashionable in today’s world, accidents can also happen.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

State of the nation

01-03-2025 05:13 Milei has been riding the crest of the wave of this summer although the resulting hubris has caused him to fly into a cryptocurrency black swan.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Hidden by crypto

22-02-2025 06:59 The Once train crash was technically a railway accident far more frequently dubbed a tragedy and a crime in not a few eyes – few transport disasters have been so heavily politicised even if two previous rail accidents had claimed more lives.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Primaries (time and) Again Serve Oppositions

15-02-2025 06:05 Introduced little more than 15 years ago for less than noble reasons and widely rejected today as a waste of time and money, the PASO primaries will not be missed by many.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Woke no joke

08-02-2025 06:55 “Woke” has become a pejorative for anything the new right considers excessively progressive, but too few people here seem to have any precise idea what it means.

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Carnal relations and the forces of heaven

01-02-2025 06:05 The Menem Presidency was the closest thing to providing a template for the disruptive novelty of Milei’s administration but the return of Trump to the White House invites new comparisons.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Coming through the rye

25-01-2025 06:55 “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” Well worth recalling in this election year in Argentina where there is a widespread assumption among pundits that Milei is coasting to victory.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

The 86th victim

18-01-2025 06:41 Ten years later, Argentine society is still owed an explanation of a bafflingly mysterious death.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Is appreciation appreciated?

09-01-2025 19:37 Currency appreciation has been a central factor in giving Milei a dream spring – let us see if that same factor impelling several million Argentines to vacation abroad this summer sends the balance of payments wheel spinning in the opposite direction.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Death be not proud

02-01-2025 18:10 Jimmy Carter and Jorge Lanata contrasted in many ways, the one profoundly humanitarian, the other deeply human.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Caste away

21-12-2024 05:07 If our parliamentarians are going to be their own men or women, some way must be found of making them fully accountable to their voters.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

'Cause I was the taxwoman

14-12-2024 05:39 ARCA (until recently AFIP) tax bureau chief Florencia Misrahi’s dismissal could be worth a closer look to have some idea of where the Milei government is heading as its second year begins.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

No quorum, no forum

07-12-2024 05:30 Congress becomes its own worst enemy when deputies and senators refuse to do the work for which the tax-payer remunerates them.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

The protectionist racket

30-11-2024 05:37 While Donald Trump and Javier Milei might be a mutual admiration society, they are moving in opposite directions on protectionism.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Juan Donaldo moving from Pink to White House?

16-11-2024 05:59 Javier Milei might be The Donald’s “favourite president” yet Trump’s campaign rhetoric would seem to be on a collision course with the Argentine’s track record after almost a year in office.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Poverty lies under the mattress

05-10-2024 06:06 Idle capital amounting to over half of Gross Domestic Product surely goes a long way towards explaining why over half the population is poor.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Untidily Crumbling Radicals

28-09-2024 06:05 The Unión Cívica Radical crisis perhaps stems from standing or falling from being the men in the middle in many senses – representing a middle class facing extinction and a middle ground squeezed out by polarisation.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Higher learning versus hire learning

21-09-2024 06:19 There is no chance of improving the quality of higher education without doing something about the quantity of both universities and students.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Teachers left alone

14-09-2024 09:35 If education began with Socrates and his pupil Plato on two ends of a log, both learning and teaching are in crisis today.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

The whys and whens of decline

07-09-2024 05:08 Analysts of Argentina’s decline understandably focus on the whys but there is a strong case for saying that they are inextricably intertwined with the whens.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

When ugly ducklings are black swans

31-08-2024 05:27 How can the libertarian creed possibly have anything in common with the totalitarian model of a military dictatorship?

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Liberating the Liberator

17-08-2024 06:31 Today is the 174th anniversary of the death of independence hero José de San Martín – but he has become so frozen in marble that his humanity escapes our grasp.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Is there life after presidency?

10-08-2024 05:12 If vice-presidents have historically been a pebble in the shoe for heads of state, ex-presidents have also been a factor worthy of mention.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

No economising economists

13-07-2024 07:44 The atomisation of economic thinking prevails far beyond the ministerial level in Argentina.

by Michael Soltys

BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Staging a coup

06-07-2024 05:54 The historical yardstick of coups d’état has been whether they are successful or not with their authenticity seldom coming into question. Except in Latin America, where magic realism has added that word “autogolpe” to its vocabulary.

by Michael Soltys

Beyond the headlines

Work in regress?

29-06-2024 04:27 How can having a job continue to be synonymous with making a living if there are around seven times as many people below the poverty line as jobless?

by Michael Soltys

Beyond the headlines

All in the family

22-06-2024 05:05 Nepotism is an even more chronic vice of Argentine politics than corruption. And if nepotism requires nephews, these are forthcoming in the Javier Milei administration.

by Michael Soltys

Beyond the headlines

Right is always right, right?

15-06-2024 06:24 Fragmentation is the name of the game both here and there – Europe’s far right is merely the loudest and most visible.

by Michael Soltys

Beyond the headlines

Friends will not always be friends

08-06-2024 05:49 Professionalism is plunging to new lows under a president who at times seems to take the first half of his self-definition of “anarcho-capitalist” just as seriously as the second.

by Michael Soltys