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Argentina’s First Budget Surplus in 123 Years

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Armstrong Economics By Martin Armstrong

Argentina has posted its first budget surplus in 123 after President Javir Milei took office and demanded an abrupt halt to government spending. Governments worldwide should carefully take note.

Milei proudly announced:

“The deficit was the root of all our evils — without it, there’s no debt, no emission, no inflation. Today, we have a sustained fiscal surplus, free of default, for the first time in 123 years. This historic achievement came from the greatest adjustment in history and reducing monetary emission to zero. A year ago, a degenerate printed 13% of GDP to win an election, fueling inflation. Today, monetary emission is a thing of the past.”

Economic emissions should become a coined phrase as it is far more harmful than anything government is currently trying to conquer.

 

Argentina was forced to stop printing money back in 2022 after inflation surpassed 60% in July of that year, and their currency became utterly worthless. The central bank raised rates to nearly 70% to no avail as government continued borrowing. The problem with socialism is that they eventually run out of other people’s money. The government was spending over $6 million daily on social programs, but the poverty rate continued to rise, and around 57% of the working population could not find jobs. There were mass strikes since their money could not fund basic goods. Even if they could find employment, what incentive would the people have when the currency is worthless? Since they had no way to pay off their debt, the government simply continued to print more and devalued its own currency in the process.

Javir Milei was called a right-wing extremist for denouncing socialism and promising to curtail government spending and social programs. He understood that socialism COULD NOT WORK. It took President Javier Milei of Argentina a mere two months to push his nation into a surplus. The Economy Ministry declared that the government posted a $589 million surplus back in April, the first surplus in a decade. Milei referred to the government as “a criminal organization,” and recognized that the public sector needed to shrink as 341,477 people were on the government payroll when he took office.

Referred to as the “gnocchi” after the Italian pasta dish that is commonly served on the 29th of the month, the same day as payday, are the individuals in Argentina on the government payroll who do absolutely nothing. They were installed by politicians in exchange for favors. Critics claim he is firing at random, but the Milei Administration has assured the public that selecting those who will be laid off will be an “extremely surgical task, done so as not to make mistakes.”

Argentina_election_results_Milei_wins 11 20 23

Milei has already eliminated useless agencies such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labor, and Ministry of Social Development. In his words, Argentina is currently a poor country and cannot afford these departments that do absolutely nothing to improve the nation’s economic conditions. He has cut the Cabinet in half and no one has noticed a difference.

Milei removed price controls and devalued the currency by 54%. Transport and fuel subsidies were eliminated. It was noted that these measures would at first hurt PPP before the economy could begin to heal. Imagine inflation cooling in February at 276% — the situation was dire. The International Monetary Fund awarded Argentina a $44 billion credit program. The nation is beginning to stabilize very slowly, and it took decades of deteriorating economic conditions for someone to come in and clean house.

He has called his measures a form of “shock therapy” for Argentina’s economy. Milei agreed to devalue the nation’s peso from around 350 to 800 pesos per USD. He has eliminated quotas on imports and exports and removed the licensing that was difficult to obtain. There is a temporary rise in taxes for non-agricultural trade that brings it on par with industry standards. Transportation and energy subsidies have been eliminated.

Milei is the same man who stood before the crowd at Davos and criticized their glorification of socialism. “The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism,” Milei said to a hostile crowd at Davos. “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world—rather they are the root cause.”

Those in charge want us to believe that capitalism equates to greed while collectivism is seen as a form of social justice but, of course, requires the money of others. Free enterprise is under constant attack, and Milei is one of the only world leaders fighting for its existence. “Social justice is not just. It doesn’t contribute to the general well-being,” Milei said to Davos, citing that socialism is “intrinsically unfair” and forces the state to attack the people for taxes. “Can any of us say that they voluntarily pay taxes?” he asked the crowd.

He was once called the Donald Trump of Argentina. We can hope that Donald Trump will take swift action to reduce government spending. DOGE appointee Elon Musk congratulated Argentina’s president when news of the budget surplus broke. Unfortunately, America is too far in the hole to recover by slashing programs or cutting government. It would be a massive step forward but our deficit has been permitted to run wild for too long to be tamed.

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Zelensky appoints Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland as economic adviser in Ukraine

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Ex-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced her resignation from Parliament amid Conservative criticism that she can’t serve Canada while working for a foreign government.

Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland is stepping down from Parliament after being appointed as an adviser in Ukraine.

In a January 5 post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared the appointment of Freeland as an economic adviser to Ukraine, prompting Freeland to announce her resignation from the Canadian Parliament hours later.

“Today, I appointed Chrystia Freeland @cafreeland as an Advisor on Economic Development,” Zelensky wrote. “Chrystia is highly skilled in these matters and has extensive experience in attracting investment and implementing economic transformations.”

News of her appointment was blasted by Conservatives, who quickly pointed out that Freeland’s position in the Ukrainian government would compromise her work within the Canadian Parliament.

“You cannot serve as a member of Parliament (and collect an MP salary) while working for a foreign government,” Conservative MP Andrew Lawton wrote on X. “It’s that simple.”

Freeland responded to the backlash just hours later, revealing that she plans to resign from Parliament in the coming weeks.

“In accepting this voluntary position, I will be stepping aside from my role as the Prime Minister’s Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” she wrote.

“In the coming weeks, I will also leave my seat in Parliament. I want to thank my constituents for their years of confidence in me. I am so grateful to have been your representative,” Freeland concluded.

Despite serving as a Canadian MP, Freeland’s dedication to Ukraine has played an important role in her career since the beginning of the Ukraine and Russia conflict in 2022. Already, Freeland was serving as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada’s new Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.

However, she resigned from these positions in December 2024 after Trudeau requested her resignation as finance minister.

During her time in power, Freeland was known for her ties to globalist groups and her heavy-handed response to anti-mandate protesters during COVID.

During the 2022 Freedom Convoy to protest ongoing COVID regulations, Freeland froze the bank accounts of Canadians, who donated to the protest without a court order.

Later, hearings revealed that Freeland told fellow cabinet members the Freedom Convoy supporters whose bank accounts were frozen under the Emergencies Act would not be able to access their funds until they first reported to police.

Freeland was also personally commended by Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, for working to achieve his globalist goals.

In addition to attending WEF meetings, Freeland is currently a member of the WEF Board of Trustees.

Freeland also touted the WEF’s anti-carbon narrative just days after a “renewable” energy crisis left many Canadians without power during one of 2024’s coldest weeks.

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President Trump And The Doomsday Glacier… a blow to the planet, or to funding for climate alarmism?

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Steve Milloy

President Donald Trump is driving climate researchers literally to the ends of the Earth as they try to save their taxpayer funding. Expect to see a slew of hand-wringing reports about, and even perhaps from, the Thwaites (aka “Doomsday”) glacier in West Antarctica.

The glacier got its nickname from a Rolling Stone reporter in 2017 in an article titled: “The Doomsday Glacier:  In the farthest reaches of Antarctica, a nightmare scenario of crumbling ice – and rapidly rising seas – could spell disaster for a warming planet.”

Past the ominous title, the scare is that the Thwaites is melting and could raise sea levels by 10 feet, which would submerge about 2-3 percent of the global land mass, excluding Antarctica.

Last May, the Trump administration announced it would cut funding for the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a football field-long icebreaker that has been taking researchers to study the Thwaites glacier. In its 2026 budget request, the National Science Foundation said it was terminating the lease. There is no replacement ship on the horizon.

Researchers wanting to go to Antarctica, where it is now summer, have had to scramble for ships. This scramble has been made more challenging because ship owners and researchers, afraid of losing taxpayer funding, are also taking reporters and their crews along to dramatize the budget cuts using the backdrop of the scariest thing they can imagine – the Doomsday glacier.

New York Times reporter Raymond Zhong has already filed articles since Dec. 30. PBS has a reporter aboard a ship sending alarmist reports. Undoubtedly, there are other reports on their way as well.

Will the Doomsday glacier live up to its name? Or will it be another in a long line of failed, if not dishonest, apocalyptic climate predictions?

It seems to be true that the Thwaites glacier is melting. But there’s much more to consider just than that.

The rate of melting is very slow. A 2023 study estimated that over the next 50 years, the Thwaites glacier might add as much as a few millimeters (about one-tenth of an inch) to global sea level over the next 50 years. That is a far cry from the claim of 10 feet of sea level rise.

Next, the fate of the Thwaites doesn’t seem to have anything to do with emissions or “global warming.” Research indicates that there are 91 volcanoes under the West Antarctic ice sheet. Not surprisingly, the Thwaites glacier is melting from the inferno beneath.

Of course, the Thwaites couldn’t be melting at the surface because there’s been no warming in West Antarctica since the late 1990s. In fact, West Antarctica has cooled by about 3°F since 1999.

Another recent study reported that the Thwaites glacier started melting in the 1940s as the result of an El Nino, a little-understood, but periodic natural warming of the Pacific Ocean: “The glacier retreat in the Amundsen Sea was initiated by natural climate variability in the 1940s. That ice streams such as Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier have continued to retreat since then indicates that they were unable to recover after the exceptionally large El Niño event of the 1940s,” the researchers concluded.

The more one reads about the Thwaites glacier, the easier it becomes to understand why they have to call it the “Doomsday glacier.” Once you understand the non-threatening reality, the only way to make it scary is to give it a scary name and hope people are too frightened to look past it.

Three cheers for Trump for defunding this and other climate research. As these researchers lose their funding, maybe they can move to Hollywood and try writing disaster scripts.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.  

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