The international deployment that contributed to the unexpected victory of Javier Milei’s Freedom Advances Party (LLA) in Argentina’s Oct. 26 midterm elections was tantamount to the landing of the U.S. Marines. The massive presence of the Trump administration and Wall Street in the country over the past couple of months was unprecedented. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a $20 billion swap loan right after Trump met with Milei on Oct. 14 and then started throwing billions onto the Argentine markets to keep the peso from collapsing before the election, with the proviso that Milei do well on Oct. 26.
Then JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon swept into the country on Oct. 22 with a phalanx of international financial vultures, including the head of JPMorgan Chase’s International Council, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He and Bessent collaborated on putting together a private $20 billion loan from the four U.S. banks that hold 88% of Wall Street’s total derivatives—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase. Foreign private investors who joined Dimon in Buenos Aires were salivating over the prospects of looting the country of its immense natural wealth.
From a regional standpoint, the immediate effect of the Oct. 26 victory will be to strengthen the hand of the warhawks who are threatening military action against Venezuela and attacking boats in the Caribbean on grounds they are drug traffickers. Brazil, a target for destruction by Washington and London, will be further surrounded, while the imposition of the Austrian School’s killer austerity, that has already decimated large sectors of Argentina’s population, will be intensified.
