I'm John Batch with my good colleague, Professor Evan Ellis, who takes me into rooms I've never known existed,

the story of these states of the Americas that are dramatic from election to election.

The U.S. is muted in comparison to some of these sharp turns.

And right now, we have more information from the Argentinian election that happened some

years ago, because Javier Malay is enjoying a success, and the success is backed up by a new

S&P ratings. I read the headline. It sounds dry, but it by a new S&P ratings.

I read the headline.

It sounds dry, but it's not.

S&P raises Argentina's long-term foreign currency's sovereign credit rating to triple C plus.

Professor, I think triple C plus sounds like a disaster, but it sounds like Argentina's out in the street celebrating.

What's happened?

Good news is always relative, John, but it's really a combination of political stability

and financial stability with a very bitter medicine that Javier Malay has put into effect.

So as you recall, as we've talked about in in previous weeks, just over time,

Javier Malay took a number of difficult actions, significantly reducing public sector spending,

transfers of federal money to the provinces, significantly cut some of the public programs to try to balance the budget.

Also had to try to get a freely tradable Argentine peso.

It took a big hit with currency devaluation, had negotiated an agreement with the IMF

in order to make sure that the money was flowing to get those payments.

And so it took a lot of things that caused, frankly, a lot of pain for Argentines who saw

the end, the subsidies for certain public services and electricity and public buses,

who saw a certain amount of contraction initially of private sector activity.

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