Milei’s former partner questioned Caputo’s appointment

Diego Giacomini, libertarian economist and former friend of the president-elect, Javier Milei, strongly criticized the appointment of Luis “Toto” Caputo as head of the Economy portfolio. On his

This morning, the economist was interviewed by journalist María O Donnell on her program on Urbana Play and there he expanded on his opinion. “Toto Caputo is a person who prides himself on never having read an economics paper, he does not know economic theory. This is what in the jargon is called a “trader”, which is someone who buys and sells financial assets. On that level he is actually very good at buying and selling to make financial assets. He was (Mauricio) Macri’s finance minister, he was the one who placed all the doubt in Macri’s government. Now, not knowing economic theory, not knowing macroeconomics, he cannot execute macroeconomic programming, which is the main job of an economy minister”; Giacomini began his presentation.

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Giacomini is one of the people who knows the now president-elect best, since he was his friend and they worked together. In this sense, Giacomini established a very big difference between the libertarian economist and his now new officials. “Milei is a person who loves economic theory, loves economic theory papers, loves macroeconomic literature, loves the theory of economic growth and likes macroeconomic programming.

So we understand why his value judgment regarding Toto Caputo is not that it was not positive, it was very negative,” Giacomini recalled. And during the Macrista government, especially in 2018, Milei had strongly questioned Caputo in various media appearances. Giacomini also criticized what was done during the Macrismo: in fact, he said this morning that he met with both Caputo and Federico Sturzenegger, then a Macrismo official, and explained to them that the plans they wanted to carry out regarding inflation management It was going to cause Macri’s government to end “with more inflation” than what the former president found when he took office.

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Giacomini also questioned the appointment of Demian Reidel as head of the Central Bank. However, he also said that he tries to be optimistic. “It may be that he brought them for a specific job for each one. To toto Caputo caputo because he tells him ‘I know how to fix the problem of the leliq’. (…) And Riedel to fix the problem of the stocks and get out of the stocks, because he was already in the central bank when it opened the stocks at the beginning of 2016. Thinking positively, once they do those two jobs perhaps they will start giving him the place to another economic team in a second stage,” said the economist.

At this time, the possibility is being considered that when Caputo is appointed as Minister of Economy, who is not a supporter of dollarization, this proposal that was so central during the libertarian’s campaign will finally not be carried out. But Giacomini does not believe it: “Javier Milei is not going to give up dollarization just like that, much less before starting.” However, he explained that, precisely, “in order to dollarize he has to first fix the leliqs and then he has to open the stocks.”