This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 22nd,

2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

Javier Malay's ambitious plans to deregulate the voluntary sector in Argentina is slowing. His large package of reforms

to further lift government impositions in the country has stalled. So it's appropriate to focus

now on the most important reform, the one on which most of those

other reforms will hinge, getting inflation under control, and that means dollarization.

Cato's Daniel Raisbach and Gabriella Calderon comment.

Danielle, if you don't mind, give us a brief update on the reforms in Argentina.

It seems that things have slowed and if I understand your previous comments to me,

the honeymoon for Javier Malay is over.

Yes, I believe that is correct, especially after the failure of a very large reform bill that had to go

through Congress and it was approved initially in general terms, but once Congress had to vote on specific issues,

it became evident very quickly that Milay doesn't count with congressional

majorities to get his legislation through especially the more

libertarian aspect of things for instance privatization of state-owned enterprises.

And that fell apart and the whole legislative bill goes back to square one.

So in that sense you are correct in terms of the honeymoon being over rather quickly.

And just to understand some of the politics here,

Javier Malay's party has a quite small share of the legislature.

People who you might expect would be gung-ho for his package of largely deregulatory reforms of the private

sector. And so, and there was a lot that he did without the approval of lawmakers just by virtue of the powers of the office of

president in Argentina but anything else that he wants to do he needs the

...