I'm John Batsu, with my good colleague Gavin Ellis, and searching for good news.

We find Argentina, under new leadership for some time now, and they're always mixed headlines,

but they used to be one direction only. I mentioned, for example, Argentina's inflation sped up again in March, okay,

but at the same time, that is not nearly as profound for the government as the news that the

IMF 20 billion is in a process of coming through. Professor Javier Malay is a colorful figure.

He doesn't need our attention, but Argentina does.

What would you measure now, given the upset everywhere else in South America,

is Argentina looking like an anchor for a new way of doing government that isn't dominated by the, what you'd have to say,

top down in many states.

Well, John, Argentina certainly appears to be one of the few but promising success stories.

And for me, a key part of that was the radical reorientation of government

policy. Previously under the Parenthood, you had what was fundamentally a government-heavy clientalistic

system where there would be subsidies and economic distortions, big government spending, a certain

amount of corruption that was associated with transfer payments from the taxes that were taken in by the federal level, redistributed to the states.

But that system essentially was running out of money and running into poor economic performance.

It had record deficits.

It had skyrocketing inflation, et cetera.

And so when Javier Malay took over Argentina, it had, you know, skyrocketing inflation, etc. And so when Javier Malay took over Argentina,

he put some very bitter medicine in that involved, you know, simultaneously significant cuts

to the government, limiting almost 70,000 federal workers, slashing transfer payments to the provinces,

but also a significant

devaluation of the currency and an end to subsidies that caused a dramatic increase in costs,

...