Milei breaks promises: money printing, debt and pension cuts

Milei promised dollarization and zero money printing: the data says otherwise

More than a year and a half after taking office at the Casa Rosada, the balance sheet that emerges from the published material bears almost no resemblance to the program with which Javier Milei won the election. Dollarization never arrived, the Central Bank remains standing and the peso continues to be legal tender, propped up by daily intervention and an overvalued exchange rate that, according to the text, makes Argentina the most expensive country in Latin America. The flagship campaign promise — closing the Central Bank and eliminating the peso — remained just rhetoric.

The article that sparked the discussion, signed by libertarians Antonella Marty, Roberto Cachanosky and José Benegas, argues that Milei does not represent real change but rather the repetition of failed formulas disguised as liberalism. The central accusation is not that he hasn't made cuts, but that he cut where he said he wouldn't: 82.5% of the reduction was concentrated in public works, pensions and education, while the so-called political caste emerged practically unscathed. The slogan that the caste would pay for the adjustment remains, with the numbers on the table, a campaign lie.

What peine to the zero money printing promise?

On July 13, 2024, Milei promised to freeze the monetary base starting on the 15th. The data handled in the material points to the opposite: the monetary base grew 322% since he took office and cash in the hands of the public by 280%. After the zero money printing announcement, the aggregate would have increased another 102%. The technical defense circulating in the debate holds that this growth responds to accounting effects by the central bank to prevent hyperinflation, and that this money would not have actually entered circulation. It is a plausible explanation in theory, but the article frames it within what it calls monetary authoritarianism disguised as liberalism.

The Chinese loan that contradicts the rhetoric

During the campaign, Milei said he would not maintain relations with any communist country and specifically named China. One of his first government decisions was to negotiate with Beijing a loan of 18 billion dollars. In the debate it is clarified that this would not be new debt but an extension of the swap, because there was no money to repay it. The nuance matters, but it does not erase the contradiction: the country that was going to be ignored ended up being the one holding up part of the financial scaffolding.

Public debt and the JP Morgan report

Public debt increased by 4.336 billion dollars in June 2025 alone, accumulating 465.355 billion, according to the figures cited. The official response is that there is a fiscal surplus and that borrowing only refinances the financial dead weights inherited from Peronism, with country risk falling from 2,700 to 700 points. The argument has a problem: a primary surplus does not prevent the debt stock from growing when interest is capitalized. The JP Morgan report would have come as a cold shower for the Government, although the material does not detail its conclusions.

The audio case and the shadow of Karina Milei

The focus of the debate shifted in the latest responses to a different matter: the leak of audio recordings about alleged 8% bribes in the disability area, which would implicate Karina Milei and the Menen brothers. The courts would have seized the phone of the official in charge of the area and confiscated several envelopes with 200,000 dollars. All of this is under investigation and none of the people mentioned has been convicted. The dismissal of the department head occurred after the recordings were disseminated.

Poverty and wages: two narratives that don't fit

Here the disagreement is total. Unicef would have acknowledged that Milei's management lifted 1.7 million children out of poverty, and several participants maintain that real wages have recovered and that poverty has fallen almost 20 points from its peak. On the opposite side, it is recalled that the peso went from 400 to 1,400 per dollar since October 2023 and that a coffee with milk in Buenos Aires now costs four dollars with practically identical wages. Both things can be true at the same time: monthly inflation fell from 25% to 1.7%, but the accumulated price level continues to weigh on wallets.

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The disconcerting fact remains. The reduction of ministries, the big headline that went around the world, had an impact on spending of 0.00142% of GDP. Nine large ministries replaced eighteen small ones. The show for the gallery worked; the savings did not.