In November 2023, a group of more than 100 internationally renowned economists —including Thomas Piketty, Jayati Ghosh, José Antonio Ocampo, and Branko Milanovic— signed an open letter published in The Guardian, in which they sternly warned about the alleged dangers that a potential presidency of Javier Milei would entail.
The letter predicted "economic devastation and social chaos" if the then-libertarian candidate came to power, describing his dollarization proposal as "economically unfeasible" and his ideological positions as a direct threat to the country's democratic and social stability.
Time, however, has done its work. In just a few months since the start of his administration, Javier Milei has not only avoided the feared collapse, but has also achieved concrete progress in terms of macroeconomic stabilization, consolidating twin surpluses—fiscal and trade—and containing inflation that seemed out of control. The intellectual establishment that predicted the apocalypse is now beginning to backtrack, acknowledging, even if only indirectly, the error of their diagnoses.
