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Speaker 1: Argentina's leading presidential candidate is Javier Melea. He is pledging

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Speaker 1: to close the country central bank and saying he would

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Speaker 1: make every effort to avoid a default on the country's

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Speaker 1: sovereign debt if he wins the October vote. Mela spoke

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Speaker 1: with Bloomberg swan Pablo Spinetto. Here's a portion of their conversation.

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Speaker 2: I think there's a previous discussion about dollarization. Actually, strictly speaking,

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Speaker 2: it's to get rid of the central bank. The dollarization

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Speaker 2: is an instrumental issue at the end of the day.

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Speaker 2: There are four argumentative axies. One has to do with

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Speaker 2: a moral issue, which is that stealing is wrong and

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Speaker 2: senior ridge is nothing more or less than a swindle

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Speaker 2: by politicians against good people. Therefore, let's say, if we

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Speaker 2: consider that stealing is wrong, one of the greatest thieves

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Speaker 2: in the history of mankind is the central bank. The

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Speaker 2: second point has to do with a technical issue, because

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Speaker 2: in the Argentine case, it is more evident when a

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Speaker 2: product has no demand, its price is zero. So if

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Speaker 2: the local currency has no demand and it's the price

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Speaker 2: should be zero. The equilibrium real balances are zero. Whatever

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Speaker 2: amount of money a central bank wishes to impose. The

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Speaker 2: counterpart is that the price level is infinite demand, then

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Speaker 2: its price should be zero. Equilibrium real balances are zero

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Speaker 2: whatever amount of money a central bank wants to impose.

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Speaker 2: The flip side is that the price level has infinity,

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Speaker 2: And what do you do with the central bank? Would

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Speaker 2: you close it? At one point you made the joke

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Speaker 2: that you were going to set it on fire. Well,

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Speaker 2: what you do with the building is a problem of

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Speaker 2: what you decide to do with it. It's a figure,

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Speaker 2: it's a metaphor. What I'm saying is that the institution

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Speaker 2: doesn't exist anymore. I am saying that in the transition,

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Speaker 2: until you can transform the banking system into a free

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Speaker 2: banking system, it will have to fulfill the function of

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Speaker 2: regulating the banks. The superintendent of financial institutions will continue

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Speaker 2: to operate until a free banking system can be set up.

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Speaker 2: And in that idea, if you are president in six months,

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Speaker 2: ten months, one year, all the bills in circulation and

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Speaker 2: in Argentina would be dollars, all dollars.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that's Javier Mile, a leading presidential candidate in Argentina,

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Speaker 1: speaking with Bloomberg. Juan Pablo Spinetto to hear more conversations

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Speaker 1: like this. Subscribe to your Bloomberg Talks podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,

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