Moisés Naím / The Wall Street Journal
When Javier Milei is sworn in as Argentina’s new president on Sunday, it will mark a historic first: Never before has a doctrinaire libertarian been elected to lead a country. Milei ran on a radical campaign of deep cuts in spending and taxes, and ditching the Argentine peso in favor of the U.S. dollar.
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Moisés Naím / The Wall Street Journal
In the first half of 2019, Venezuela began to suffer gasoline shortages. This, on its face, was preposterous. The nation had the world’s largest proven oil reserves—its refineries boasted the capacity to supply the country’s needs many times over. Yet drivers up and down the land found themselves waiting days on end in lines outside gas stations, bringing to mind the old joke about how if communists took over the Sahara it would run out of sand.
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Moisés Naím and Uri Dadush / The Wall Street Journal
At first glance California appears to be in the midst of an economic and fiscal crisis that dwarfs Europe's. Its unemployment rate, now more than 12%, is one of the highest in the U.S. and nearly 3% more than the EU average; California's home prices have dropped 34% since 2007, while in Europe the decline has been moderate; and over the last three years, the collapse of California's tax receipts produced a cumulative budget deficit of about 40% of its revenues, more than twice that of Greece. California's politics are as gridlocked as any in Europe. Political infighting left the state without a budget for the first 100 days of this year.
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