Zanny Minton-Beddoes

You know, essentially the government taking a stake in Intel.

These are kind of remarkable things for, you know, notionally Republican administration to be doing.

It's essentially intervening in business in a very, very sort of heavy handed and overt way, you know, calling out CEOs when they're not doing what the president wants, punishing those who have an agenda that he doesn't like.

Look, I'm still a free marketeer.

I'm still a good English liberal who believes in a limited state and is skeptical of untrammeled power and authority.

But I'm really struck that the U.S.

now always seems to be sort of normalized this kind of behavior by the government.

And it's, to me, very un-American.

The U.S.

is essentially trying to provide enough financial muscle to shore up confidence in Argentina and in President Belay.

I actually think that what President Belay has done in Argentina is pretty impressive.

And it's been a pretty remarkable turnaround in a country that has

you know, for decades failed to get to grips with its fiscal problem.

Basically, there's an election coming up, there's a lot of fear that he will lose in that parliamentary election, and thus be unable to continue his reform program.

And so the investors are nervous about Argentina.

And what the US Treasury has essentially done is to try and sort of provide the

with its US dollar lifeline, the confidence that prevents a run on the peso.

Now, the peso needs to float the currency.

And it's not sort of in principle crazy that the US should provide a sort of underpinning of support.

It's exactly what the International Monetary Fund was set up to do for countries.