Early in the morning of Oct. 17, a little over a week before Argentina’s Oct. 26 midterm legislative elections, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted this message on X: “The United States stands with Argentina. Yesterday, Treasury bought pesos in the `Blue Chip Swap’ and spot markets. Treasury remains in close communication with Argentina’s economic team as they work to Make Argentina Great Again. Treasury is monitoring all markets, and we have the capacity to act with flexibility and with force to stabilize Argentina.” Acting with “flexibility and with force?”
Yes, Bessent is watching the Argentine markets like a hawk, intervening to halt the peso’s collapse and maintain the fiction of stability before Oct. 26 when President Javier Milei’s Freedom Advances party (LLA) is not expected to do well. Recall U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning to Milei during their Oct. 14 meeting, that “I won’t be generous with Argentina,” if Milei doesn’t do well on Oct. 26. Speculation that there will be a major devaluation right after Oct. 26 is also rattling the currency markets. On Oct. 15 the peso dropped by 5.2% even despite Bessent’s intervention, Bloomberg reported. On Oct. 17, after an initial spurt, bonds also dropped after only a brief surge. Promises of more money flowing into the country, including from multilateral lenders, repo loans or new currency swaps, have hardly instilled a sense of confidence in voters. Why should they?
The Oct. 17 issue of the opposition daily Página 12, headlined its coverage “Bessent or Peron,” on the anniversary of the date in 1945 when a massive and historic mobilization of workers, organized in the CGT trade union federation, forced the military government to release then Labor Secretary Juan Peron from prison and allow him to speak to the huge crowd from the balcony of the Casa Rosada. The government was totally overwhelmed by the unprecedented display of support for Peron. That was the birth of the nationalist Peronist movement. The following year, 1946, he was elected President, defying the brazen intervention of U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden, who tried to prevent Peron’s election with a smear campaign. Peron turned that upside down with his brilliant “Braden or Peron” campaign slogan and won easily.
Página 12 makes the appropriate point on Oct. 17 that Bessent is another Spruille Braden. His undisguised attempt to control Argentina’s electoral results, on behalf of British geopolitical aims and in defense of his Soros-linked billionaire speculator friends who prey on Argentina, repeats a history with which Argentines are well acquainted, They are enraged by it and by the U.S. defense of a mentally unbalanced Milei whose cruel and sadistic policies have destroyed the country. There will be no easy victory for Milei on Oct. 26.
