By Germán Kammerath, former minister of communications of President Menem (Diario Perfil Córdoba, July 8, 2024; Excerpt)

Back in 1990, as a provincial deputy for the UCeDé, I went to Chile to get a firsthand look at what economists were calling the “Chilean miracle”. The following year, 1991, the publisher asked me to launch José Piñera's book El Cascabel al Gato in Buenos Aires; he'd been a minister in Chile.

While I was at it, I asked President Menem, whom I already knew, to sit down with Piñera and hear straight from him about the structural overhaul he'd pulled off in Chile.

Menem welcomed us warmly and right on time at 5 p.m. With him were Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, Interior Secretary Adelina de Viola, and me. Piñera walked him through the three big modernizations he led: the Mining Reform that, in the long run, turned Chile into a mining powerhouse; the Labor Reform that set up company-by-company collective bargaining still in place today; and the Pension Reform that launched the groundbreaking individual capitalization system.

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Menem's eyes lit up. He fired off practical questions, genuinely curious. Piñera's closing point hit hard: the reform had built a homegrown national capital market, strengthened the financial system, and made 30-year mortgages for homes and tons of private infrastructure possible. Drive around Chile now and you'll see it all came true—they've left us in the dust when it comes to the quality and sturdiness of their infrastructure. Plus, those pension funds fueled the rise of countless Chilean companies and their spread across Latin America.

In that electric moment, with the president clearly blown away, Menem turned to Cavallo—firm but friendly—and asked, "Minister... what are we planning to do about this?" Cavallo said a team of Argentine experts, led by the sharp Walter Schulthess, was putting together a mixed model.

That's when Menem, dead set, told him: "Minister, I want Argentina to have a system just like Chile's. I want Argentines to own their own retirement savings. That's my call." And just like that, President Menem made the historic move to overhaul the pension system.

Just a few weeks ago, the Cato Institute held a major conference in Buenos Aires—"The Rebirth of Freedom in Argentina and the World"—featuring former Chilean minister José Piñera and Argentina's current president, Javier Milei, as the headline speakers. In his remarks, Piñera brought up that pivotal 1991 meeting with Menem, which I had the honor of setting in motion.