I visited Buenos Aires in November last year.
I wanted to see firsthand what was going on under the newly elected President, Javier Milei. I met some fascinating people who shared their stories and perspectives on the Milei Revolution.
As I was researching an article about my visit, I read some early accounts of the rise of Milei and the stories told about him in 2022 and early 2023.
In the readers’ comments section under a rather scathing article about him in the Buenos Aires Times, there was a short but forthright comment that explained why the reader thought Milei was likely to win the Presidency. It was from a reader named Jeffrey Stout, who seemed to be a lone voice in the comments section, taking this counter view.
I looked up Jeffrey on LinkedIn and asked him a couple of questions. It turned out Jeffrey was in BA and only a short walk from where I was staying, and the following day he met me for lunch in the Argentinian November Spring sunshine.
Jeffrey, a successful businessman and US citizen, knew what he was talking about, and he kindly spent a couple of hours helping understand a few fundamentals of how things worked, or most often didn’t work, in his adopted country.
12 months on, with the midterms out of the way, I reconnected with Jeffrey for an update on what had happened over the year since we met, and how he sees things shaping up. He kindly agreed to record this interview. And this is what he told me.
Please enjoy my conversation with Jeffrey Stout.