By Michael Every of Rabobank
Nu, so it doesn’t whistle
I start today by referring readers to two classic Jewish jokes. The first has the punchline, “That’s funny, you don’t look Jewish.” The second ends, “Is that all you people ever think about?” Together, they are a warm-up for the not-a-joke Bloomberg headline that ‘Milei’s Conversion to Judaism Seals Pro-Israel Push by Argentina’, replete with a picture of the eccentric new president-elect wearing a kippah after seeing a Chabad rabbi in New York. Although Bloomberg is unclear about when Milei chose to convert, Tablet magazine noted weeks ago that he began, but hasn’t completed, a formal conversion in 2021 after starting “to read the Torah as part of his nerdy approach to economic theory.” Well, if he’s looking for nerdy economists, Milei has come to the right place: the list of (not a real) Nobel Prize Laureates for Economics does the talking, even if he hates what nearly all of them have to say given his libertarian views.
(I can also report the initial collated ‘Home Team’ reaction to the above news is: ‘How nice to have some support; let’s hope he drops the meshuga schtick; and that he knows…
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