Today we take a break from our road-tripping adventure to offer a quick update from the other End of the World...

Long time readers will recall our fascination over what we've been calling, with immodest grandiloquence, The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age. 

The story so far is that, down at the southern end of the Americas, in our chosen country of self-exile, Argentina, the locals have sensibly chosen to "throw the bums out." 

That is, in November of last year, the gauchos voted for a man who promised to finally cut their overfed Peronist government down to size. (He even campaigned with a chainsaw, to avoid confusion among the nuance-averse.)

Javier Milei was elected in a landslide and has since taken his motosierra to the thorny brambles of the State with admirable gusto (though, rather to this observer's disappointment, the nation's Banco Central, which Milei promised to burn to the ground, remains standing. Still, one lives in hope...)

Doomsday Mongers

The Argentine experiment is particularly interesting in that it represents the first time in modern history that a sizable population (Argentina is home to ~45 million mostly-carnivorous human beings) voluntarily, peacefully, voted to "cancel" their own state. Nor did El Presidente renege on his promise to do just that. 

On day one in office, Sr. Milei abolished or consolidated half the federal ministries, laying off tens of thousands of government parasites in the process and promising more of the same in the days ahead. And just last month, in a major legislative victory, his so-called "Ley de Bases" and fiscal reform package was signed into law, paving the way for sweeping privatization across multiple key industries along with much needed labor market deregulation.

Needless to say, bed-wetting nanny statists around the planet, from Buenos Aires to the DC Beltway to Brussels and beyond, promptly set about prophesying a doomsday scenario, whereby the proud republic of Argentina would shortly descend into a Dantean hellscape the likes of which the civilized world has never known. 

It is to their great and enduring dismay that such a scene has not materialized, though that hasn't stopped them painting the picture in their newspaper columns just the same. Here's the latest from our lease-mongering colleagues over in the popular presses...

The worst economic crisis in decades puts Argentine ingenuity to the test under President Milei ~ The Associated Press

Milei's market honeymoon ends as investors question economic plan ~ The Financial Times

Milei's Austerity Plan Pushes Argentina Into Recession in First Quarter ~ Bloomberg