“My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but until now I had never believed it.”
The phrase was said by a president of the United States sixty years ago but has some current reminiscence after the statement this week by Luis Caputo, the Minister of Economy of Argentina, who attacked private medicine companies (prepaid) for the increase of the fees they charge their members: “They are declaring war on the middle class,” he tweeted after the increases of more than 100% registered since December. “We from the government are going to do everything in our power to defend the middle class.”
Now the National Commission for the Defense of Competition (CNDC) seeks to determine if there was a concerted maneuver between the health companies.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was that American leader who said the phrase against the businessmen of his country. In April 1962, after several months of negotiation, his government had reached a
wage agreement with the main unions and executives
of the steel companies, as a measure aimed at keeping
inflation
low throughout the economy.
Kennedy's attack on businessmen was leaked to the press. The following days, then, he had to go out to qualify his words. But in private he continued saying the same thing, according to historian Arthur Schlesinger, special advisor to the Democratic president's government, who wrote in a diary of memories about his time in the White House with which he won the National Book Award. US Book). Kennedy, the son of a businessman, didn't want to defeat his country's businessmen by threatening to lower the price of their products, Schlesinger said, but rather he wanted to show that he was a businessman—his father had been a businessman. and understood the market.
In the postwar period in the United States there was an
Office of Price Administration
, which disseminated a list of maximum prices and of goods that were prohibited from being produced for unrestricted commercial purposes. Although under Kennedy that office no longer existed because inflation had subsided and because economists considered that the best method to keep prices at bay was through monetary policy, deploying the use of mathematical and modeling tools to the maximum, the government The US continued to work on agreements with the most delicate economic sectors to set specific prices depending on the circumstances.
“
An increase in workers' wages
above the rate of inflation, especially in steel and oil, would increase the cost of other products, which
in turn would have to be passed on to consumers
.” Kennedy's plan to control steelworkers' wages was modest and based on cooperation. His economic team hoped that it would give him some leeway to apply a more aggressive fiscal policy without worrying about the possibility of going overboard and increasing inflation,” says author Zachary D. Carter in a book about JMKeynes and where he narrates how the ideas of the English economist influenced the governments of the United States.
Agreement, truce, gentlemen's agreement.
They are all euphemisms that politicians around the world, not just in Argentina, at some point used—and will continue to do so—every time inflation challenges their efforts. From Kennedy in the post-war era to Milei in the 21st century, trying to either establish a ceiling for May and June on the salary increases sought by the Teamsters union and its general secretary, Hugo Moyano, or set fines for medical companies. prepaid for recent increases.
But in politics betrayals are the order of the day and even more so when there is money involved in the negotiations.
“A few days after Kennedy closed the deal,” Carter continues, “the president of US Steel [NE: a steel production company with industrial plants in the US and Europe], Roger Blough, casually informed Kennedy which was going to raise prices by six dollars per ton anyway. Having used Washington to lower his employees' high wage demands, Blough intended to allow his shareholders to enjoy the benefits of the price increases."
Just as
the destiny of the American Keynesianism
of the Democrats had come to depend on Kennedy's relationship with the business magnates of that country, perhaps
the Austrian-Argentine destiny
will depend on the success of
Milei's relationship with Elon Musk but also on a price-salary agreement with Argentine businessmen
to reach and sustain
inflation in single digits
in the coming months.