Speech by President Javier Milei at the Medal of Honor ceremony at CEU San Pablo University.

Javier Milei, President of the Nation: Good morning everyone. I want to thank CEU San Pablo University for the invitation to speak here, among you, and for honoring me with the medal of merit; the highest distinction awarded by this institution. It is a source of pride for me and I hope to live up to such an honor.

And I decided to change the speech... First of all, thank you very much for this honor. It is a pleasure for me to be here. And the idea is to tell them what being in the electric chair is all about, which, I think, is something that can be very useful and what the decision-making process is like, especially in extremely complex situations. Basically, it is what I have been expressing since the Davos speech last year and in different works and it is what gives the name to my next book, which will be published in a few months, which is called Morals as State Policy.

But first I want to make a brief introduction of things that have happened to me in my connection with economic analysis and, especially, with politics. In Argentina I am a very good friend of a great and prestigious professor called..., who is Professor Juan Carlos de Pablo, who is an eminence and there is no author who has stopped reading, and when I had the opportunity to have Murray Newton Rothbard's article, Monopoly and Competition, come into my hands, I am a specialist in economic growth with and without money, I had been teaching microeconomics and general equilibrium for more than 25 years, and I was faced with the problem of what in growth is called “El palo of hockey”, which is the evolution of GDP per capita since the beginning of the Christian era where it is practically constant until the year 1800 and then begins to grow strongly.

In fact, from the year 1800 to today, the population multiplied by more than 10 times and the GDP per capita increased nearly 15 times. That is to say, a more than proportional increase. That is, increasing returns. And increasing returns in economic theory are associated with concentrated market structures and those concentrated market structures indicate that it is not Pareto optimal, that it is not efficient, that they should be regulated. And the truth is that it seemed very challenging because if we look at the opposite, 95% of the population lived in extreme poverty, that is, with less than a dollar a day, and today that number must be changed so that it does not give ridiculous numbers.

So, in that criterion, the question was how could it be that something that generated so much well-being in humanity, for economic theory, was not only optimal, but was also thought of as something bad and that had to be controlled, regulated, curtailed. That, clearly, posed a serious problem for me. That is, how could it be that the neoclassicals considered something bad that has lifted so many people out of poverty. And in that sense, a former student, who also worked with me, brought me Murray Newton Rothbard's article, Monopoly and Competition, which is part of volume II of the book Man, the Economy and the State, and I no longer forget the experience: the article was 140 pages long, I stood in front of the article, I remember that 3 hours later, when I finished it, I said everything I taught about market structures in the last 25 years is wrong.

Obviously, that led me to buy a lot of Austrian school books, and I started reading intensely, and obviously what happened to me? What happens to all the people who read Rothbard: I became an anarcho-capitalist. In that context, obviously when one embraces that vision one feels a deep contempt for the State. So, hey, what are we doing. But then one of the things that happened to me, I, regularly, had lunch at least three or four times a month with Professor De Pablo, and he had spoken and done reports and books on Argentine economic policy and he had spoken with all the Presidents of the Central Bank and Ministers of Economy from the middle of the 20th century onwards, with everyone, and one of the things that always happened to me is that we were clashing all the time because he was very condescending to the policy makers, and, of course, I ended up read Rothbard and I didn't want to see a politician but not even three centimeters away. So, in that context, it is clear that I had a position deeply against the presence of the State, and one of the things I realized is that when you are on the platform it is much easier than when you are on the playing field, and also, in line with Rothbard, who created the Liberal-Libertarian Party, I realized that things are not changed by shouting from the platform. That is to say, one of the most beautiful things we have in Argentina are our soccer shows, probably if you see an Argentina match it is a wonderful thing, plus we beat almost everyone, and I hope that continues like this, but the interesting thing is that you see the stadium full of flags, colors, people dressed for the occasion, very funny chants, but you know what? You put the ball in the center of the field and no matter how much you shout, no matter how much you say anything, it doesn't move; The one who scores the goals is Messi, and I hope he continues to score more.

In this sense, one of the things I realized is that this could not be changed by shouting from the stands and that you had to get involved and that is how, when I celebrated my 50th birthday in 2020, I decided to enter politics; In 2021 I managed to become a national deputy for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and in 2023 I became President of the Nation. And in that context, one of the things that I realized is that it was not that Pablo's professor was condescending to the policy makers, but that he was clear about the amount of restrictions that those in power face, I call it the electric chair, and what's more, I have a reflection on the electric chair, and that is that, I have a mandate with the Argentines for 4 years, with the option of 4 more, which will be determined by the Argentines next year, but once it ends I am going to retire from the totally political and I'm just going to go to a remote field, with my four-legged children, to read, write and give lectures.

And honestly, I don't think I should have any more say in anything once I'm out of the electric chair because the electric chair is very idiosyncratic. That is to say, I could not give any recommendation, that is, on specific, specific policy issues to the owners of other electric chairs, and what's more, I'm going to tell you something, it would even be unwise and impertinent to do so for whoever is my successor because we do not know the number of restrictions faced by whoever is in power at that moment, whether institutional or political. There is a set of restrictions that one ignores, which is why later I publicly apologized to Pablo's professor because I got angry because he was too condescending, and he answered me with something, in his wisdom, with something very interesting, because we are friends and we get together every weekend to watch opera in Olivos, and then we talk, obviously, about economics and so on, and one of the things that he told me, he says that after reporting to the different Ministers of Economy and Presidents of the Central Bank he He asked how these people didn't get heart attacks at least once a month, and he said that after seeing all the things I had to deal with, because, of course, I saw it closer, he doesn't understand how we don't get heart attacks twice a day.

So the first thing is that it is not easy to be in the electric chair, there are usually many more restrictions than we think there are. Therefore let's say one has to understand Albert Armen Alchian's phrase that says "Everything that is is optimal, otherwise it would be different." That is to say..., but he probably doesn't do it because he must have some restrictions, and if he were stupid, sooner or later he would find out because his life depends on it. So…, that as a general framework.

And another is, which is what I want to convey to you, which is what decision-making is like and how in my case I make decisions. That is, and it is my case and it is how I see it and what are the things that help me. That is why what I call Morality as State Policy is so important to me. Morality as a state policy is basically three blocks. There is a block that has to do with ethical and moral values. There is a second block that has to do with economic efficiency. And there is a third block that has to do with political utilitarianism understood as politicians trying to capture votes to win an election. And the way you make decisions has consequences. That is, it has consequences on millions of human beings.

For us, what comes first are values. When we talk about ethical and moral values, the first thing we point out is that, from our point of view, there is no place for moral relativism. That is, we understand that different cultures may have different appreciations, but there is a set of values ​​that, at least from our point of view, are not negotiable.

In that sense, the four blocks that make up ethical and moral values ​​is to understand man from a perspective of Greek philosophy. That is, where there are many elements linked to the thought of the Greeks. For example, there is a very interesting case that is that of Philoctetes. Philoctetes, who participates in the war in which Troy is taken, due to the characteristics of Troy, archers were very important (let's go with archers again, my Chancellor was also an archer), but archers, that is, arrow shooters, but the joke was worth it for my football-loving past. In that context, Philoctetes had been bitten by a snake and his feet generated a lot, a lot of smell. The smell was so strong that Odysseus decides to throw it on an island and when they go to Troy and are going to advance and then they ask the oracle, the oracle tells him that without Philoctetes they would not be able to win. Philoctetes only agreed to return if Odysseus asked for forgiveness, and that's interesting: Odysseus didn't want to ask for forgiveness in front of his peers because that made him feel like he was less powerful. So how is that situation resolved? Do you apologize, lose power in front of your peers, but win, or don't you and lose? So what are you looking for? Cheat him. So, he goes to Achilles' nephew, Patroclus, he tricks Philoctetes, they take him away, he never asks for forgiveness and they win Troy.

The question is, is that valid? The answer is no. Not everything is worth winning. Because that is a pyrrhic victory. That's winning by cheating. That doesn't work. That sooner or later is going to fall. That is, if he really wanted to win, he had to go and apologize for the mistake he had made. That is, do not try to outwit the oracle. He should have done so by asking for forgiveness, and if he was not willing to ask for forgiveness, let him lose with all the law. Because think what would have happened if when he left it to Philoctetes, Philoctetes had died..., so he would not have been able to repair it. Therefore, winning is important, but how one wins is not trivial. If I have a runner of one hundred meters flat, he is excellent, he is wonderful, I don't do the example with me because he doesn't give me the physic du role, I would have to lose a few kilos and train a lot and even at this age I couldn't do it anymore, and suppose that your peer, one of your peers is Usain Bolt, if you were focused only on efficiency and wanting to win, and you are always losing against a Usain Bolt, well, one solution is to shoot Usain in the head Bolt; They wanted to win, they are going to win.

But that's not winning. The simple fact that they shot him in the head to remove him from the competition means that they are losers and will carry that defeat ad eternum. So, to win, not everything goes, and that case is if Odysseus did not want to apologize, let him face it and lose. And if he wanted to win, because he considered that winning was more important, he should have asked for forgiveness because Philoctetes could have died, and not try to outwit the oracle and then have a pyrrhic victory because deep down, do you believe that the peers do not know that he is a traitor, a liar, someone not trustworthy?

That is why Greek philosophy is full of these wonderful cases to think about how to reflect. Another very important topic is Roman law, the source is clearly Ulpian. And when we talk about law we basically talk about natural law, and that when positive law does not coincide with natural law, that becomes illegitimate. That is, you can enact a law, it may be legal, but that does not make it legitimate. Back: you pass a law where you can kill people, it may be legal, but it is illegitimate. And everything you do against natural law is going to be illegitimate.

Therefore, every time you go against life, liberty and property, and you also do it from the State, that is, by definition violating the principle of non-aggression, it will inexorably end badly. On the other hand, the third element is the righteousness of the Stoics, but more thought from Adam Smith's point of view, not so much as a matter of self-flagellation, but rather in line with chapter VIII of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which has to do with virtue. And virtue, what Adam Smith was talking about at that point, is not very different from what King Solomon, the wise king, had to face, which is when he is faced with the fact that he is going to be emperor. He was very young, so he asks the creator for three wishes and asks for wisdom to be able to discern between good and evil because evil is often masked. So, you, sometimes, I say evil is not so obvious that it comes painted as evil, it comes wrapped in the best intentions. In general..., but they are always red.

So, basically, the second is, being able to distinguish good from evil, is the courage to choose good, and not only do you have to discern between good and evil and have the courage to choose good, you also have to have the temperance to stay on the path of good, and that is an additional subject. Obviously, when they occupy a position of power there is a fourth, a fourth desire, which is to be fair, and that in terms of efficiency is going to play a fundamental role.

In the case of Adam Smith, he groups both courage and temperance into self-control and adds a new virtue, which is beneficence, but understood as charity, but voluntary, not imposed at gunpoint. If charity is at gunpoint as the State does, that is not charity, that is theft disguised as altruism. There is a beautiful phrase by Thomas Sowell that says since when envy stopped being a capital sin and became a virtue because deep down, as Thomas Sowell also says, social justice is nothing more nor less than envy plus rhetoric.

And in this part, the fourth point regarding what ethical and moral values ​​are, Judeo-Christian values ​​play a fundamental role. And those values ​​are already written from the book of Shemot, that is, from the book of Exodus, that is, the second book of the Pentateuch or the Torah. When you study the Torah, in the second book, which is Shemot, that is, the Exodus, in Parashat Ytro, which is that portion of the week that is studied from the Torah, the creator gives the tables of the law to Moses, who then takes it to the people and presents it to them. It is interesting how freedom is already proclaimed in the first commandment of the Hebrew version because the first commandment says "I am your God, the one who brought you out of slavery in Egypt." That is, in the first commandment freedom is openly declared.

So not only is freedom proclaimed, the right to life is also proclaimed. The sixth commandment says "Thou shalt not kill", I am always talking about the Hebrew version. The eighth commandment says "Thou shalt not steal." The ninth says "You will not bear false witness", that is, you will not lie; We could remind journalists of this every day, as they dedicate themselves to selling the news according to who pays them with official guidelines.

And that, if you notice, is perfectly related to what we define as liberalism. I usually work recurrently with a definition given by our greatest reference for the ideas of freedom, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr., who says "Liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defense of the right to life, liberty and property." That is, it is an exaltation of what has to do with natural law and not interfering in the lives of other people.

Then, given this analytical framework of ethical and moral values, we move on to the second block. The second block is that of economic efficiency. When it comes to economic efficiency, there are two situations. There is the static version and there is the dynamic version. The static version is more related to what in the neoclassical format we call Pareto optimality. The question of Pareto optimality, which seems quite reasonable in principle and which would seem like an attempt in the neoclassical format to put the idea of ​​the invisible hand into operation and demonstrate its efficiency, basically what you have is that a situation where if you can make someone better without making anyone worse, you would have a Pareto gain. The Pareto optimal would be when all those profit possibilities are exhausted. That is to say, they could not improve someone without making the other worse. So far it seems pretty harmless. The problem is when economists address the problem of studying equilibrium. The study of balance basically has three elements, the proof that it exists, if it is unique and if it is stable.

Up to that point it is also quite innocuous. The problem is that when we want to define it in terms of Pareto optimality and we want to link it with the invisible hand, we want to derive this from the fact that each person guided by their own interest leads to maximum general well-being. The issue is how we construct the test. A fan of Adam Smith tells you, I'm not going to question Adam Smith, I revalue him infinitely. In fact, for me Adam Smith is to economics what Gauss is to mathematics, someone who was 200 years ahead.

In fact, his greatest disciple said that he was the Newton of philosophy. So he was a distinguished character and well earned the name of father of economics. But apart from that, the problem lies in the mathematical instrumentation of the question of optimality. That is, because to prove the existence, I need to apply a fixed point theorem. To make it easier, I'm going to directly use Brouwer's fixed point theorem, so I do it with functions and have a unique solution. So what I need is for that function…. What is the fixed point theorem? It is neither more nor less than the mean value theorem, but generalized. I have a function that is continuous in a set and what goes from negative to positive, there has to be a point where that is zero. Well now think about the excess demand function as a function of prices, that at a price the excess demand is zero means that supply and demand are equal. That is to say that they are in balance.

Therefore, in that case, there would also be, since we are talking about functions, they are point-to-point applications, therefore the balance would also be unique. And if we ensure that the direct effects exceed the crossed effects, the dynamics matrix is ​​negative defined and, therefore, the system is stable. In other words, up to that point everything is harmless, up to that point no one has a problem. When is the problem? When we want to introduce optimality. And when we want to introduce optimality then we begin to ask that the supply and demand functions be derived from optimization exercises such that they are maximums. So, if the supply and demand functions are derived from optimization exercises, where you have the optimal responses. So each one carrying out his own maximization leads to maximum general well-being.

Now, what is happening? That implies a topological structure, working with a topological structure. The problem is that when in real life reality does not coincide with the model derived from a topological structure, what do we do? Well, someone who makes decisions and their life depends on it, leaves the model aside and tries to do something that maps to reality. We economists decide otherwise, and that is to say that it is inefficient and that it is a market failure. That is to say, the model is not wrong, what is wrong is reality.

Well that can cause some problems. That position, for example, with respect to increasing returns, what it would do is that it would imply a problem to achieve a maximum, consequently they would not have Pareto optimality and consequently, what do they do? They regulate assimilating a competitive company. When they do that, they kill increasing returns and when they kill increasing returns, they kill economic growth. And grow because they are packed with regulations. Sorry for breaking things so violently but I come from a country that is full of regulations. We have removed 16,000 regulations in two years, at a rate of 17 per day.

Therefore, then the question is, do you agree with Adam Smith's idea? Yes, I agree with the invisible hand idea. What I do not agree with is the mathematical structure with which we economists work and if you take the work of Hans Hermann Hoppe, you make the derivation of optimality from logic without having to adhere to a mathematical structure. And, consequently, if you do not violate the principle of non-aggression, something understandable and reasonable, that we do not violate the principle of non-aggression, if we respect private property, obviously we are going to respect the right to life, what happens? And we respect Locke's principle of original appropriation, that is, if we are respecting the right to life, liberty and property, the result emerging from the logical construction that Hans Hermann Hoppe makes, results in an optimum without having to adhere to any mathematical structure or a topological structure that conditions the way in which we look at reality and, then, that phantasmagorical vision of market failures disappears.

That is to say, market failures are a problem where reality does not map to the model and we have that arrogance of saying that reality is wrong. If you are going to make decisions, do not make decisions thinking that reality is wrong, things will go very badly for you. That is the first point regarding efficiency.

Therefore, you can continue to support Adam Smith's idea, but from an alternative construction that allows us to avoid these atrocities of market failures. The second point in terms of efficiency is the brilliant concept that Professor Huerta de Soto developed, which is the concept of dynamic efficiency. Clearly, let's say, also closely linked to Schumpeter and the idea of ​​creative destruction.

And the first thing you have to understand is that if you had a, let's say, neoclassical, perfectly competitive model, you would have no incentives to invest. It would be absolutely inefficient because you would be sinking resources, you would be in a situation of less return compared to your peers, to pursue uncertain projects in the future, which would be profoundly inefficient, that is, it would lead you to bankruptcy. I mean, unless you can capture forward, what? Extraordinary returns.

That is to say, the other side of growth processes, linked to creative destruction, inexorably implies having to work with concentrated structures or with increasing returns. Because if not, there is no way they could be investing. It would be a suicidal act.

And one of the wonderful things that Professor Huerta de Soto points out is that he points out that you cannot, on the altar of efficiency, sacrifice justice. That is, something efficient cannot be unfair. It is, again, the case of the runner who wants to beat Usain Bolt. Shooting him in the head is not worth it, it is not sustainable. In fact, if the institutions worked well, he would have to end up in prison. So it doesn't work. So, efficiency and justice are two sides of the same coin.

And when you respect the values ​​that are the bases of capitalism, of free enterprise, which are Judeo-Christian values, and you act fairly, those societies prosper. That is to say, it is the civilizational feat of the West that pulled us out of the hole, that made us have an infinitely better standard of living than our peers had 250 years ago. I don't even need to go further back, because the condition of life, the normal condition of life, I sometimes find it funny when they say no, we have to, let's say, explain poverty.

No, the natural condition of man throughout history was poverty. What needs to be explained is how to generate wealth. And the way to generate wealth is with free enterprise capitalism.

And free enterprise capitalism doesn't come from a cabbage, it comes from a set of Judeo-Christian values. And those Judeo-Christian values ​​are already written in the tables of the law, in the book of Exodus, in the book of Shemot of Parashat Ytro. You respect those Judeo-Christian values, you will prosper. In fact, the epilogue of my book is called Capitalism, the divine machinery of paradise.

Human beings were expelled from paradise. Therefore, we will not be able to return to paradise. That was denied to us. That's it, they expelled us. What was paradise? In paradise it is not that there was no work. The creator had told man that he must take care of the garden of Eden. In other words, it's not that there was no work. Work existed in paradise. What characterizes paradise is that the endowments, I am going to say this in terms of general equilibrium, are infinite. That is, they do not run out.

And also, knowledge, technology is infinite. Therefore, you could do anything in the Garden of Eden. And they worked and did not sweat. They learned without effort. And that is what we lost when we were expelled from paradise. You will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow. But the job already existed before. Nothing more than now they were going to have to sweat, they were going to have to suffer from it when working. And now there were no more infinite endowments. And they had to discover the technology. But the Creator throws us a center and sends us the tables of the law. If we respect the table of the law, we will be able to lead the land, let's say, it does not consist of the rabbis and the different religious ministers. Their mission is not to take the faithful to paradise, but rather to bring paradise. And if you adhere to the tables of the law, those values ​​are the basis of free enterprise capitalism and, consequently, it prospers. And when you move away from those values ​​and embrace the satanist, who was effectively the satanist, like Mr. Karl Marx, and whose values ​​are envy, hatred, resentment, unequal treatment before the law and if it is necessary to murder people based on a cause and thus they killed 150 million human beings, it is the opposite model.

And if the model, let's say, of divine machinery generates prosperity, what will the opposite model generate? Impoverishment. That is why it was always a failure economically, socially and culturally, and 150 million human beings were killed for a stupid idea, for a satanic idea, because Marx himself has satanic writings. Therefore, you are going to find the terrorists aligned with the left, because they have a common enemy, which is free enterprise capitalism that is based on Judeo-Christian values. This is why the left and terrorists despise Israel, and Israel is the bastion of the West.

And the last part is political utilitarianism. When you act fairly, you are efficient, the economy prospers and you know what? They are going to vote for them. When you work seeking votes for the same cost, that is going to end badly.

Example, social justice is aberrant, it can generate votes. I have one person who earns 500 euros and I have four who earn zero. A politician can come, let's suppose he doesn't have porous or very porous hands, that he leaks 24 million somewhere, or a million and a half of jewelry, it doesn't matter, those leaks or the leaks on the woman, I don't know, they are details. Let's say, it's just a theoretical speculation. Well, having said that, let's suppose that you score 400 from the first one and they are all equal at 100. What is going to happen? If they go to a vote they win with 80%. But what is the problem? That's unfair.

And how it is unfair because notice that they are robbing you, which is unfair, and also they treat you unequally before the law, because they make one lose and others win, and they do it with a motive of political utilitarianism. They are going to win the elections, but what is the consequence? They are going to destroy efficiency, they are going to destroy capital allocation and therefore they are going to collapse. Do you want an example of social justice? Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. Having embraced increasing doses of socialism has turned us into a country in the middle of the table and below.

When we came to power we had the characteristics, all together, of the three worst crises in Argentine history. We had a monetary imbalance, that is, a money overhang, twice what it was before the crisis of '75, known as Rodrigazo, which involved multiplying the inflation rate by six from one day to the next, with which from one day to the next we could have multiplied inflation by twelve times. Furthermore, we had an imbalance in the Central Bank worse than the one before Alfonsín's hyperinflation in '89.

We had four monetary bases maturing one day. Therefore, there was the possibility of quintupling the amount of money in one day. We had debt maturing in a period of less than 30 days for the equivalent of 10 monetary bases. That is, if you look, we could have been multiplying the amount of money by 15 in less than 30 days.

Inflation was traveling at 1.5% daily. We were on the way to hyperinflation that could have reached 15,000% when they do the monetary numbers, and to that we have to add that we had worse social indicators than those we had in 2001. That is, we had the sum of all the evils.

So the question is: how did you do it? Well, the first part is to surround yourself with a good team. I mean, and without a doubt I surrounded myself with very talented people. For example, one of the architects of having avoided hyperinflation is here, who is Chancellor Quirno who at the beginning of the government was Secretary of Finance working with Toto Caputo, the Minister of Economy and with the President of the Central Bank.

Because, for example, how does one go about stopping all that monstrosity of emissions that were coming? Well, in other periods of history they solved it with confiscations. For example, prior to Convertibility, a supposedly successful plan, which had a prior confiscation, was called the Bonex Plan. That is, deposit holders lost 90% of the value.

And if I talk about morality as a State policy and I talk about respecting the right to life, liberty and property, how am I going to start a stabilization process based on expropriation? It is incoherent. So how did you avoid hyperinflation? Well, we had a fiscal deficit of 15 points of GDP, 5 in the Treasury, 10 in the Central Bank. I'm with the applications now.

So, I had said that I was going to campaign with a chainsaw and said that in the first year I was going to achieve fiscal balance. They told me that I was crazy, that this was impossible, that I wasn't even going to be able to achieve it in the four years of my mandate, because it couldn't be adjusted even by chance more than one point per year. We consider that the fiscal deficit is immoral, because if I finance it with monetary emission it is a scam, it is a falsification of money and it also ends in an inflationary tax that is deeply regressive and also generates inefficiency in the functioning of the price system. If I finance it with debt it is deeply immoral, because it means that then today's party is paid for by future generations, our children, our grandchildren, people who have not yet been born. It is deeply immoral. That is, let us party and our heirs pay for it.

It's nonsense. It's immoral. Therefore, debt was not a solution.

What's more, for the first time in Argentine history the debt went from 550 billion dollars to 500 billion dollars. That is, we paid cash 50 billion dollars. But not only that.

So what do we do? We must reduce the deficit. What would any politician have done? Raise taxes. But that is violating property rights. Therefore, that is also immoral. It is increasing coercion, it is increasing the size of the State, it is stealing, it is taking away freedom. Therefore, the only solution that we saw as viable was to reduce public spending. And what did we do? We made a fiscal adjustment of five points of GDP in one month. We reduced the number of ministries by almost a third. We lowered public spending 30% in real terms.

And when we did that, what did they say? That we were going to sink into a great depression. Not only that we did not fall into a great... exploding poverty and destitution. Not only that we didn't fall into a great depression.

Since we assume today in the seasonally adjusted version of the EMAE, which is the GDP in monthly frequency, we are 11% up. It means that the Argentine economy grows on average at 5% annually, when in the previous 100 years it did so at 1. That is, five times the rate at which the Argentine economy grows.

What happened to the poor? We have the Minister of Human Capital here. When we are honest, poverty was 57% on a monthly basis. Today it is 28. That is, we lifted almost 30% of Argentines out of poverty. That is, 14 million Argentines stopped being poor.

Indigence, which was around 20%, today is below 7%. That is, it fell by two thirds. That is, people who don't have enough to eat. And the children, who are the future, and these are no longer our numbers, they are UNICEF's. Child poverty, which was 70%, today is 42%. That is, we have lifted almost a third of children out of poverty. Today a third of the children are no longer poor. What is missing a lot? There is no room for doubt.

Of course, what is the media reporting? Poverty in Argentina was at 42%. We came from 70.

So, see how, in addition, everything that had to do with the restructuring of the Central Bank was all done on the market. All the debt was negotiated on the market. A property right was never violated. And inflation, which was around 211% in retailers and 300% in wholesalers, and which in dynamics was going to 15,000, today ranges between 30% and 25%.

That there is much left to do? Of course, there is no doubt. But we did it without violating property rights, returning freedom to Argentines. Therefore, when you decide to embrace Judeo-Christian values, which is a fundamental reflection of Huerta de Soto's work, you are going to get on an efficient path and you are going to prosper. And we do that from day one. I set the direction for my Ministers and tell them which part of the toolbox they cannot use because they are immoral. And that inexorably brings prosperity and we are making Argentina great again.

May God bless you, may the forces of heaven be with you and long live freedom, damn it! Thank you so much.