What Is It Special About Interest Groups in Argentina That Make Fiscal Consolidation Infeasible?

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

A. Urga has a very good economic future, but it hasn't reinvented itself as much as other Latin American countries have. It should be doing more exporting of agro-related products and services to the rest of the world. And i think what elso argina should be doing is starting walla and walla here because that's what i did in El Salvador. I don't know why some politicians are so opposed to fiscal consolidation for long term growth. But we do have politicians that don't really see that. Even just ten days ago, there was one politician who said, we need lower inflation for the elections, and we also need more pasos on the streets.

Gifted young Argentines tend to leave home to “make it in America” and never look back, but after earning a degree from Harvard, writing a book about the Spanish Civil War, and living in the United States for 12 years, Pierpaolo Barbieri has returned to Argentina. And he’s bringing foreign capital and talented expats with him. Pierpaolo’s FinTech startup Ualá works to bring universal banking to a Latin American market in which huge swaths of the population are still stuck using cash for everything. By giving the working classes power over their own money, he hopes to produce greater prosperity and social mobility in his home country and beyond.

Pierpaolo joined Tyler to discuss why the Mexican banking system only serves 30 percent of Mexicans, which country will be the first to go cashless, the implications of a digital yuan, whether Miami will overtake São Paolo as the tech center of Latin America, how he hopes to make Ualá the Facebook of FinTech, Argentina’s bipolar fiscal policy, his transition from historian to startup founder, the novels of Michel Houellebecq, Nazi economic policy, why you can find amazing and cheap pasta in Argentina, why Jorge Luis Borges might be his favorite philosopher, the advice he’d give to his 18-year-old self, his friendship with Niall Ferguson, the political legacy of the Spanish Civil War, why he stopped sending emails from bed, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded April 12th, 2021 Other ways to connect

Follow us on Twitter and Instagram
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Follow Pierpaolo on Twitter
Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Subscribe at our newsletter page to have the latest Conversations with Tyler news sent straight to your inbox.