Argentina was once one of the world’s richest nations but today it’s a country on its knees with annual inflation rates over one hundred percent and forty percent of the population living in poverty.
This week on Foreign Correspondent reporter Carrington Clarke travels to the South American nation where the price of a steak is up by seventy percent this year alone and soup kitchens are struggling to meet demand. To make matters worse, the country has been gripped by the worst drought in decades. Â
With the nation on the verge of bankruptcy, Argentines will shortly elect their next president. The frontrunner is a radical libertarian who believes climate change is a hoax and who wants to ban abortion and relax gun laws. He’s also promising to get rid of the central bank, dramatically reduce public spending and replace the peso with the US dollar.
Carrington also visits the lithium triangle in Argentina’s northwest where vast quantities of the world’s lithium is located. The area is a modern-day white gold rush and there’s hope mining this rare metal – a vital component of batteries – will help solve Argentina’s economic crisis.
