@Signal312 asked me if he could give me STD (Slander To Debunk), after this article of his on the latest Saifedean slander on Milei, which I eagerly accepted. So, here we go!

To keep in mind:

• The first time I debunked Saifedean, I mentioned his textbook blitzkrieg strategy of delivering a barrage of densely packaged misinformation. That kind of strategy is akin to a DOS attack, and thus extremely robust and effective. It turns out it has a name: Gish Gallop. I'm relieved that in my first debunking I followed the advice given in the wiki entry on how to counter this strategy: I started it with an explanation on what Saifedean rhetoric strategy was, then I thoroughly debunked the first portion of his slander, not necessarily all of it as that was enough to illustrate the point.
• In said first debunking I concluded: "This people is paid to produce this overloads of lies and misinformation in order to cause an impact way before a proper response can be given, and they know any proper response will be too extensive and time consuming. The lie is much faster and short, so it will always win the time and energy balance battle". It turns out that analysis from the energy perspective also has a name: Brandolini's law.
• Be always wary of this kind of strategies. Learn to recognize the pattern. It's always the exact same: lack of sources on key details, sources that don't have a source, sources that are known to be paid pasquinades, mere opinion phrased as a statement of fact, old sources for facts phrased as current, careful concatenation of framings, conclusions derived from strategically placed insinuations to make them look as legit argument, etc etc etc...

1° Paragraph:

In my previous piece on Milei[1] 18 days ago, I argued that the Milei administration is running a debt and inflation ponzi that is coming near its end, and that the only concrete achievement of his administration so far is that it destroyed the currency and created a shitcoin casino making bond and foreign exchange speculation the only path to financial security in Argentina.

Already debunked here.

2° Paragraph:

The Argentine peso is down another 10% against the US dollar, and has already breached the top of the band in which the Administration said it aims to keep the peso.

The article was published on September 9. His previous article was published on August 20. What happened in the middle? Elections. On September 7 the provincial legislative elections in Buenos Aires where held and it resulted in a devastating defeat for Milei. The jump in the USD price happened from that same day onwards, as you can see in the very same graph he cites. That happened because of the fear of his debilitation, not because of his measures (the jump happened on a Sunday). Why his debilitation would cause such a jump? On one side, because historically those in office have tried to revert bad electoral results by augmenting emission and debt, hence ramping up inflation. On the other side, because those who won always want to increase emission and debt. Both fears ramped up dollar demand in anticipation. As you can see in his graph, since economic measures remained unaltered, and thanks to the key support of the US, confidence was quickly restored, and the dollar fell back to the price it had before Saifedean made his claim.

This decline in the peso comes in spite of Milei's administration officially announcing it is intervening in the foreign exchange market by buying pesos with the very few borrowed dollars it has. It's estimated they blew $540m just last week. This was all to keep the exchange rate relatively stable in anticipation of yesterday's election.

Caputo, the head of the Ministry of Economy, has always been clear that there are enough dollars in the reserve to contain any price escalation. Not only his affirmations predate with good margin the recent help from the US Treasury, but by the time I'm writing the dollar is already back to the value it had prior to the escalation denounced by Saifedean (as explained above), and that was done with the current reserves.

Not only that! Since this was all about confidence, as described prior, the Central Bank was able to buy back what was sold to keep the calm, and recovered the reserves back to their maximum level in July. The graph in that article is excellent, as it shows the absolute devastation caused by previous governments, and how this administration steadily started to revert it. As the reserves remained intact and the dollar recovered its previous price, all without new money involved (which again, shows the extreme fear the return of socialism causes), Saifedean points are effectively void. That's because he isn't being rational but simply ill-intentioned.

The Treasury managed to sell all of its most recent bond auction, but that came only after raising the annual rates to a 88%, and by imposing new higher reserve requirements on banks, which made them have to buy more bonds. As a result, Argentine banks's stocks on the NYSE crashed.

Again he frames everything trying to imply that it all happens due to bad economic measures. But if you look after any source that follows the market sentiment responsible for those rates, it all points to the same culprit I explained above: the fear of a bad election. If Milei keeps losing, the risk for a return of the socialist regime increases, and that's the fear that dominates foreign investment. And with good reason. The reasons for the recent electoral defeats are, again, complex to explain. I can go into that in another article if it's a subject of interest here. Such dire situation in political terms, not economical failure as Saifedean tries to frame it, is the main reason the US decided to give such strong support to Milei directly. After all, we are the only country left in the entirety of Latin America that tries to keep ties with the US. The rest as plunged into socialism and anti-US rhetoric.

Argentine stocks and bonds also crashed hard.

Again, that was the result of the election on September 7. Stocks are back again on green since. That was due to the explicit support of the US. The stocks fell upon fear of Milei fall, and rised back again on the renewed hope from the US support. Again, nothing of what Saifedean maliciously frames is due to Milei economic measures but, as you can see, entirely due to market sentiments. And with good reason. From such extremely bipolar fluctuations, you can tell we are balancing between good and evil on the edge of a knife...

Milei and his sister are implicated in a massive corruption scandal involving taking kickbacks from contracts for drugs for the disabled.

Milei is not implicated in the case, that's straight up a lie. But his sister is. I vow no allegiance to his sister. So far, the investigation as been void, which is remarcable since not only the case was pushed forward by a kirchnerist attorney (the one defending Cristina Kirchner currently) but it's in the hands of a kirchnerist judge (part of Justicia Legitima, a kirchnerist loyalist judges league). That's not even to say that they might not have truly something in their hands. All the contrary, it's the perfect scenario: if the case is effectively a farce, no one can ever say it was silenced. The attorney and the judge have all the reasons to push this until the last consequences. Cristina is already in jail, so this can not even be considered an extortion strategy. On the other hand if the case ends up being true, they will simply make us a favor: they will clean up Milei's cabinet from corrupt people. "Thank you", is the most I can say about it. And that's the feeling shared among Milei's supporters, most of which dislike Karina already, although for other reasons (again, long story).

Milei's party lost regional elections yesterday to the Peronists.

Again, that's not due to Milei's measures. In fact, what Saifedean carefully leaves aside is the fact that while the Peronists won, even if with a great margin, they did so with a worse performance than for the same elections on 2023. Compare the votes of 2023 with 2025. Peronism lost 470.000 votes, while Milei did slightly better (+390.000 new votes respect to 2023). However, this was a painful hit for other (again, much more complicated) reasons, which left me very pessimistic for the first time. Long, long, long story....

3° Paragraph:

For two years, this con artist has doubled or tripled most measures of money supply, enriched bond market speculators, and kept the carry trade ponzi going, draining the country of money, all under the pretext that this was necessary to prevent the Peronists from coming back to power. He still lost his election, and will likely lose the congressional elections next month, too. His hysterical antics won't be in power for long, but all the extra pesos he created and the debt he incurred, will haunt Argentinians for many years to come. (...)

All other slander debunked above, he repeats here the false argument on monetary expansion, which I already debunked here.

4° Paragraph:

I think at this point it is very important to understand the anatomy of the Bond market ponzi which Milei has used to destroy the currency and his bond market. So let us spend a few minutes seeing how the Argentina carry trade works, and why it is such a disaster, how it has been robbing Argentines of their precious wealth, and how it is impossible to sustain, and is likely on the verge of collapse.

Let's see!

Since Milei came into office in December 2023 and reneged on his promise to shut the central bank, he announced that the peso exchange rate would be allowed to decline against the US dollar at a controlled pace of 2% per month. In February 2025, this was reduced to 1% per month, and by the end of April 2025, the crawling peg was removed, and the government announced its intention to keep the peso trading in the range between 1000 and 1400 pesos per dollar.

Milei never "reneged" on his promise to shut the central bank, he was very clear from the very beginning on how he was going to proceed about it. In this note from 2022, you can see at the bottom his reform plan described in the same way he campaigned it during 2023 (Excerpt: "first generation reforms imply a reform of the State, modernization of the labor regulations, commercial deregulation, and a monetary reform which will, eventually, allow to eliminate the Central Bank"). About the rest, again, what Saifedean carefully leaves aside is that "the government announced its intention to keep the peso trading in the range between 1000 and 1400 pesos per dollar" wasn't a loose statement, but was the condition on which Milei was able to proceed with the elimination of a previous severe limitation: the maximum quota of dollars citizens were allowed to legally buy. In the linked note you can see that what Saifedean mentions corresponds to that announcement, although he carefully leaves aside that little detail. In fact, allowing the price of the dollar to float between those price bands was a conservative measure, as the most purist thing to do would have been to allow the price to float freely now that the quota was eliminated. But the previous days showed that it would have been a mistake to do so, in this still delicate, transitioning instances.

So, this is not even 1/2 the article yet, and again as you can see, it takes very long to properly unpack each point. I can't devote my time to this so I beg you to make an effort on your side and realize what's going on here, I think I made it pretty clear already.

I will try to keep the records straight as much as I can, upon request. At least until the SN cowboys learn to tame down the Gish Gallop.

So, who else wants to give me STD?

See the previous episodes:

• STD The Show - Ep 1: Hoppe Pees Himself
• STD The Show - Ep 2: Saifedean's Sore Envy
• STD The Show - Ep 3: Kirk's Full Speech