MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei gets ready for rock concert as “blue” dollar gets back on a surging path

There is a 41% gap between the official and the black market quotations of the US dollar

The “blue” version (a euphemism for “black market”) of the US dollar against the Argentine peso was still going up Wednesday as President Javier Milei was planning to make his first appearance as the leader of a rock band at Buenos Aires' iconic Luna Park stadium. According to local media, one US dollar was quoted at AR$ 1,235 / 1,255 (buy sell at Buenos Aires' “caves” (unofficial money exchange parlors), which represented an AR$ 25 increase from the previous day for a 41% gap with the official rate.

Despite growing concern, Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni ruled out any possible intervention on the government's part to reverse the ongoing trend. Financial analysts believe that the surge is the consequence of the Centraal Bank (BCRA) lowering the basic interest rate. “There is no reason for this to have any implications on prices, other than the inflationary problem we are experiencing due to the monetary and fiscal imbalances in Argentina. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other,” Adorni stressed.

“For people to be calm, the quotation of the financial dollar or the blue dollar has nothing to do with prices, which does not mean that the price dynamics are high, but it has nothing to do with this. When there was no movement in the dollar, there was inflation. So there is effectively no relation between one and the other,” he added.

Meanwhile, President Javier Milei was making the final arrangements for Wednesday's event where he will launch his controversial book El Camino del Libertario (The Libertarian's Path) and sing a rock song alongside Congressman Bertie Benegas Lynch at the drums and other non-music celebrities on stage. Tickets were free of charge for those wishing to watch the head of state do what he used to in his teenage years. In the late '80s, Milei was a singer in a band called Everest, covering Rolling Stones songs and even writing his own tunes with “sexual connotations.” This time around a cover of the local rock band La Renga is expected to be played after a speech on “Capitalism, socialism, and the neoclassical trap” as he did in Madrid triggering a diplomatic feud with Spain. Milei has repeatedly ignored La Renga's objections. The Argentine President has already made a TV singing appearance on his road to stardom as a springboard to politics.

“The President is going to make the presentation, which is going to have two parts,” Adorni explained. One will be the book presentation and in the other, Milei “himself is going to sing and is going to be the relevant figure,” the spokesman added.

During his appearance at the Vox event in Madrid, he sang a version of his own “Hello everybody, I am the lion... the lefties cry.” Adorni also pointed out that Milei was funding the event out of his own pockets to launch the book after rescheduling his original plan to do so on May 12 at the Buenos Aires annual Book Fair.

Adorni and Congressman José Luis Espert are expected to appear alongside Milei on the Luna Park's stage.

The publishers recalled a first batch of Milei's book in Spain because it featured an inaccurate description of his academic achievements, including a college degree from the University of Buenos Aires (which Milei does not have, having earned his degree from the private Universidad de Belgrano) plus a graduate degree from the non-existent “University of California.” Milei has no graduate diplomas other than an honorary PhD from the Escuela Superior de Economía y Administración de Empresas (Eseade).