The Wednesday Letter #191 - 10/25/2023

THIS WEEK: Argentina Election; Americans on Israelis and Palestinians; Intuitive Surgical; Defense Stocks; S&P Sectors Update; GeoReads #10; Tweets & Charts.

ARGENTINA ELECTION

As was widely expected, the Argentine presidential election will go to a runoff that will take place on November 19th. Less expected was that the "anarcho-capitalist" candidate Javier Milei (see the WL 183) was the runner-up in first round results. A recent poll had him leading the Peronist candidate Sergio Massa 31.1% to 28.1% but in the end, it was Massa at 36.7% and Milei at 30%. The conservative Patricia Bullrich placed third as expected, with about 24%.

Argentina has been on the wrong economic trajectory for years or, some would say, for decades. The long view shown in the chart from Our World in Data is that Argentina in 1901 had the same GDP per capita as Canada, Denmark and Germany but that its economy did not keep pace during the 20th century and until today. It is easy to see that something went terribly wrong in the late 1970s until about 1990 and again around the turn of the millennium. Absent these two retrenchments, Argentina's GDP per capita would proba…