An Argentine province has a creative solution to President Milei’s austerity: Printing its own money

Associated Press

LA RIOJA, Argentina (AP) — After entering office last year, far-right President Milei swiftly imposed his fiscal shock therapy, slashing federal budget transfers to provinces. The cuts boiled over into a full-blown crisis in La Rioja, where the public payroll accounts for two-thirds of all registered workers and the central government’s redistributed taxes cover some 90% of the budget. Faced with a desperate squeeze for pesos, the populist governor of La Rioja began printing “chachos,” a new emergency tender help cover public worker salaries and spur the depressed economy. As Milei and his libertarian supporters tell it, La Rioja’s troubles capture everything that’s wrong with Argentina’s long-dominant Peronist movement that bequeathed his government an unmitigated economic disaster.