"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.
Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s "Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.
Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.
George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?
A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.
The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.
Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.
Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.
This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.
Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.
Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.
This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.
I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
– George Orwell, "1984"
"The average person in the First World receives more information than he would if he lived in a Second or Third World country. In many countries of the world, the very idea of twenty-four hour television news coverage would be unthinkable, yet many Westerners feel that, without this constant input, they would be woefully uninformed. Not surprising, then, that the average First Worlder feels that he understands current events better than those elsewhere in the world. But, as in other things, quality and quantity are not the same.
The average news program features a commentator who provides "the news," or at least that portion of events that the network deems worthy to be presented. In addition, it is presented from the political slant of the controllers of the network. But we are reassured that the reporting is "balanced," in a portion of the program that features a panel of "experts."
Customarily, the panel consists of the moderator plus two pundits who share his political slant and a pundit who has an opposing slant. All are paid by the network for their contributions. The moderator will ask a question on a current issue, and an argument will ensue for a few minutes. Generally, no real conclusion is reached - neither side accedes to the other. The moderator then moves on to another question. So, the network has aired the issues of the day, and we have received a balanced view that may inform our own opinions. Or have we?
Shortcomings: In actual fact, there are significant shortcomings in this type of presentation: The scope of coverage is extremely narrow. Only select facets of each issue are discussed. Generally, the discussion reveals precious little actual insight and, in fact, only the standard opposing liberal and conservative positions are discussed, implying that the viewer must choose one or the other to adopt as his own opinion. On a program that is liberally-oriented, the one conservative pundit on the panel is made to look foolish by the three liberal pundits, ensuring that the liberal viewer’s beliefs are reaffirmed. (The reverse is true on a conservative news program.)
Each issue facet that is addressed is repeated many times in the course of the day, then extended for as many days, weeks, or months as the issue remains current. The "message," therefore, is repeated virtually as often as an advert for a brand of laundry powder. So, what is the net effect of such news reportage? Has the viewer become well-informed? In actual fact, not at all. What he has become is well-indoctrinated.
A liberal will be inclined to regularly watch a liberal news channel, which will result in the continual reaffirmation of his liberal views. A conservative will, in turn, regularly watch a conservative news channel, which will result in the continual reaffirmation of his conservative views. Many viewers will agree that this is so, yet not recognize that, essentially, they are being programmed to simply absorb information. Along the way, their inclination to actually question and think for themselves is being eroded.
Alternate Possibilities: The proof of this is that those who have been programmed, tend to react with anger when they encounter a Nigel Farage or a Ron Paul, who might well challenge them to consider a third option - an interpretation beyond the narrow conservative and liberal views of events. In truth, on any issue, there exists a wide field of alternate possibilities.
By contrast, it is not uncommon for people outside the First World to have better instincts when encountering a news item. If they do not receive the BBC, Fox News, or CNN, they are likely, when learning of a political event, to think through, on their own, what the event means to them. As they are not pre-programmed to follow one narrow line of reasoning or another, they are open to a broad range of possibilities. Each individual, based upon his personal experience, is likely to draw a different conclusion and, thorough discourse with others, is likely to continue to update his opinion each time he receives a new viewpoint.
As a result, it is not uncommon for those who are not "plugged-in" to be not only more open-minded, but more imaginative in their considerations, even when they are less educated and less "informed" than those in the First World. Whilst those who do not receive the regular barrage that is the norm in the First World are no more intelligent than their European or American counterparts, their views are more often the result of personal objective reasoning and common sense and are often more insightful.
Those in First World countries often point with pride at the advanced technology that allows them a greater volume of news than the rest of the world customarily receives. Further, they are likely to take pride in their belief that the two opposing views that are presented indicate that they live in a "free" country, where dissent is encouraged.
Unfortunately, what is encouraged is one of two views - either the liberal view or the conservative view. Other views are discouraged.
The liberal view espouses that a powerful liberal government is necessary to control the greed of capitalists, taxing and regulating them as much as possible to limit their ability to victimize the poorer classes.
The conservative view espouses that a powerful conservative government is needed to control the liberals, who threaten to create chaos and moral collapse through such efforts as gay rights, legalized abortion, etc.
What these two dogmatic concepts have in common is that a powerful government is needed. Each group, therefore, seeks the increase in the power of its group of legislators to overpower the opposing group. This ensures that, regardless of whether the present government is dominated by liberals of conservatives, the one certainty will be that the government will be powerful. When seen in this light, if the television viewer were to click the remote back and forth regularly from the liberal channel to the conservative channel, he would begin to see a strong similarity between the two.
It’s easy for any viewer to question the opposition group, to consider them disingenuous - the bearers of false information. It is far more difficult to question the pundits who are on our own "team," to ask ourselves if they, also, are disingenuous. This is especially difficult when it’s three to one - when three commentators share our political view and all say the same thing to the odd-man-out on the panel. In such a situation, the hardest task is to question our own team, who are clearly succeeding at beating down the odd-man-out.
Evolution of Indoctrination: In bygone eras, the kings of old would tell their minions what to believe and the minions would then either accept or reject the information received. They would rely on their own experience and reasoning powers to inform them. Later, a better method evolved: the use of media to indoctrinate the populace with government-generated propaganda (think: Josef Goebbels or Uncle Joe Stalin).
Today, a far more effective method exists - one that retains the repetition of the latter method but helps to eliminate the open-ended field of alternate points of view. It does so by providing a choice between "View A" and "View B." In a democracy, there is always an "A" and a "B." This illusion of choice is infinitely more effective in helping the populace to believe that they have been able to choose their leaders and their points of view.
In the modern method, when voting, regardless of what choice the individual makes, he is voting for an all-powerful government. (Whether it calls itself a conservative one or a liberal one is incidental.) Likewise, through the modern media, when the viewer absorbs what is presented as discourse, regardless of whether he chooses View A or View B, he is endorsing an all-powerful government.
Two Solutions: One solution to avoid being brainwashed by the dogmatic messaging of the media is to simply avoid watching the news. But this is difficult to do, as our associates and neighbors are watching it every day and will want to discuss with us what they have been taught. The other choice is to question everything.
To consider that the event that is being discussed may not only be being falsely reported, but that the message being provided by the pundits may be consciously planned for our consumption. This is difficult to do at first but can eventually become habit. If so, the likelihood of being led down the garden path by the powers-that-be may be greatly diminished. In truth, on any issue, there exists a wide field of alternate possibilities. Developing your own view may, in the coming years, be vital to your well-being."
"All the experts agree that we are going to have a massive real estate correction. This will be the largest real estate correction in the last 40 years. Real estate drives everything. With real estate crashing there’s so many other industries that will be taken down with it."
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"I've watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I've seen, from a bird's eye view, the construction and logic of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with US guidance, over the course of eight years.The logic of these ubiquitous pre-prepared fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with many WW1 innovations – a logic where victory depends on:
- you not running out of men and ammo.
- the enemy being comparatively stupid.
Of course, when you think about it, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is, in many ways, a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”. Despite not having “won” a war since 1945 (and then only truly against the Japanese), the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has *always* dominated opposing forces in every conflict.
There is some measure of truth in this perspective. But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of century, truly tested “under-fire”. This is an indisputable fact.
The US has measured its battlefield mettle, for decades, against brave sandal-shod men with AK-47s, RPGs, and a certain savoir faire for constructing IEDs. But they have *never* faced anything like Russian artillery or missiles. Not even in Hollywood movies or video games. Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all putative opponents are underestimated.
That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it. Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:
Step #1: advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.
Step #2: with target-correcting drone swarms relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, MLRS in gradations of strength and precision, and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.
Let smoke clear.
Repeat Step #1. Still something moving there?
Repeat Step #2.
Repeat Step #1. Dead bodies everywhere?
Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up.
Move to next series of fortifications. And so on and so forth …
This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of KIAs every day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties – at least a 1 to 10 ratio. Probably much lower. The artillery (with occasional air and precision missile strikes) is doing all the fighting.
But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy. I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that I am now thoroughly convinced Ukraine’s fatal blunder was following NATO's advice.
I’ll grant the remote possibility that the Pentagon/CIA had a cogent view, far in advance, of the relative unlikelihood that a half-million-strong, well-armed, and presumptively well-trained (by NATO) Ukraine military didn’t have much chance against Russia.
But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the NATO brain trust effectively disdained Russian military capability, and its commanders, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield. They clearly believed the Russians would be stupid enough to assault Ukrainian fortifications using “modern” tactics entirely ill-suited to the task at hand. Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would beat themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.
Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds (if not thousands) of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.
They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked: strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.
In short, I have come to believe the US/NATO actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” they built in Ukraine seriously had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated on their borders. In other words, they not only grossly underestimated their enemy, but they ignored centuries of history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.
But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the US/NATO-trained Ukraine proxy army been savaged by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using century-old doctrines and tactics.
Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.
Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as effectively useless against their intended targets. M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian EW counter-measures.
Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the AFU officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that developed contrary to expectations; discipline has disintegrated; improvisation has been paralyzed.
To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”. But more discerning observers around the world know better.
What sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see is that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukraine military. The US intimidation factor has been forever compromised.
More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security. I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt that most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.
More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world. Great dangers now await in east Asia …"
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"A month ago, world renowned CV19 critical care and pulmonary expert Dr. Pierre Kory said “This is a humanitarian catastrophe, and it has been ignored. It has been suppressed. It has been censored.”
Well, the dark powers who pushed the vax bioweapon have stopped ignoring the growing massive deaths and injuries and are now trying to shut people up. Namely, doctors like Perrie Kory, who is under investigation by his certification board for so-called “misinformation” about treating Covid and vax injuries that have followed the injections. The facts and data show Dr. Kory has been right all along. Dr. Kory explains, “I definitely think, and Dr. Robert Malone agrees and says, they are getting really nervous on the inside. There are a lot of people that promoted these policies and pushed this vaccine campaign, aggressively, even when the data was coming out that the initial trials were fraudulent. They mischaracterized and manipulated the data and ignored safety signals. The stopping point for these vaccines was probably reached in the second week of January 2021. There were enough deaths being reported and enough injuries being reported that had the FDA been functioning as it should have, the vaccine campaign should have been stopped back then. We are at 15 months now. They are still pushing boosters. We are vaccinating toddlers. There is no limit to this vaccine obsession. This is absolutely terrifying to behold.”
Dr. Kory says the people are waking up to CV19 vax nightmare. Dr. Kory sees vax deaths and injuries accelerating in his own practice. Dr. Kory says, “You can tell the population and the average Joe who have been lied to, drowning on propaganda, and censored from really accurate and appropriate guidance and data are figuring this out. You cannot hide a humanitarian catastrophe of this scale. You cannot hide it even with all the propaganda and censorship. You have young people dying everywhere for no good reason. That can no longer be ignored.”
Dr. Kory also says, “The excess mortality that we have seen and are seeing, first of all, it’s historically unprecedented. A few months ago, a number of life insurance companies were reporting increases in life insurance claims for young working age Americans 18 to 65, up to 40%. Lincoln Financial, the fifth largest life insurance company in the country, just a week ago, announced in the last quarter of 2021 there was a 163% increase in life insurance claims over historical baselines. Those are the drop-deads, heart attacks and strokes. The excess mortalities of cancers we are seeing are going to continue to rage throughout the vaccinated population. That’s going to be going on for some time.”
While the medical boards keep trying to silence and punish people like Dr. Kory, he is still treating patients with vaccine injuries. Kory says, “Almost all the patients we are seeing are disabled (from the CV19 vax) and they cannot work, and if they can work, they are very limited. That is one pattern. Another is they get vaxed and they get sick, and then they get better, but a week or two later, weird stuff starts to happen. The most common symptom that is I see is #1 fatigue. The vast majority are having a chronic fatigue syndrome presentation.”
Dr. Kory is trying a variety of new treatments for the vax injured, but his baseline go-to drug is still Ivermectin because it binds to the spike proteins and removes them from the body. Ivermectin is also a very good anti-inflammatory, according to Dr. Kory. The good news is he is finding ways to help people with vax injuries and is learning more every day. There is much more in the 53-minute interview."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Dr. Pierre Kory, one of the top Pulmonary and Covid Critical Care experts on the planet, who is co-founder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (flccc.net) and author of the upcoming book “The War on Ivermectin.” All the information is free on Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance website flccc.net.
Will Freak Americans Out As Prices Collapse By 50%"
by Epic Economist
"The last time the U.S. housing market looked this bubbly, property values sharply crashed. Over the past couple of years, double-digit appreciation has been the rule. Buyers were being forced to pay more than the asking prices – sometimes $100,000 more. Since March 2020, home prices skyrocketed by 45 percent, reaching levels that are impossible for many to afford. However, in recent months, a major shift has started to take place. Home sales and price cuts are becoming the new norm, leading the scorching-hot real estate market to a well-deserved slow down. The bubble has been popped by rising interest rates, and a housing market crash that can slash home values in half has begun.
The nightmarish memories of the last boom and bust remain fresh in the minds of homeowners, lenders, and Realtors. With affordability issues squeezing potential homebuyers, the latest price increases are creating no shortage of concern. A new report by Redfin exposes that some of the hottest corners of the market are already seeing some of the sharpest price cuts and big drops in demand. Since August 2021, mortgage rates have more than doubled, and approximately 20 million prospective buyers have been priced out.
According to data compiled by Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com, price cuts spiked by 50% in June from May, and doubled year-over-year. A Moody’s Analytics report outlined that homes are overvalued in at least 93% of markets across the country, with markets in 11 states overvalued by 50% or more. They are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, Tennessee, and Washington. Now, all of these markets are at risk of seeing home prices being slashed in half. “Homes are now even more overvalued than they were during the 2000s housing market bubble,” Moody’s Analytics said.
At this point, American families are facing record-high prices on about every item they need in their day to day lives. And the supply shortages for housing are forcing many to keep renting despite record rent prices. In fact, there is less housing available for rent or sale now than at any time in the past 30 years.
Current rent prices are about $1,100 higher than they were in 2020. A separate report from Redfin uncovered that nationally listed rents for available apartments rose 15% from a year ago. And the median listed rent for an available apartment rose above $2,000 a month for the first time.It really goes without saying how crazy these numbers really are. It’s clear that the housing and rent market can’t keep recording one all-time high after the other. We’re moving towards an affordability reset. More and more sellers and landlords are coming to grips with a new reality: Prices have to go where the buyers and renters are, and they’re around somewhere, but they’re a lot lower, so prices have to readjust accordingly.
The ones who have benefitted from speculative bubbles had powerful incentives to deny that this massive bubble could bust. But just as all bubbles that arise from speculative excesses, the U.S. housing market bubble reached extreme levels and started to reverse. All these gains are eventually going to be reversed, and if the system is destabilized any further, then the price drops could be far below previous lows. A property value collapse is already underway. And we can only hope this doesn’t end in another global financial disaster."
“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
"From emotional turmoil, hatred, and addiction the miracle of recovery begins in this Spadecaller Video entitled "Ex Obscurum" ("From Darkness"). Featuring original poetry narrated by the author and visual artist, Matthew Schwartz. Composer Samuel Barber's powerful musical score, adapted for the movie "Platoon", (Adagio for Strings, Op. 11) sets the background for this spiritual exodus "From Darkness."
Houston, Texas - Welcome to another Sunday Session, dear reader, when we pull up a seat at the virtual saloon, take a good, hard look at the world around us and wonder, “What on earth is going on here?” First up today, a British friend, living in Argentina, sent the following message from the fin del mundo... "BTW, did a Disco order the other day... they didn’t bring water or loo roll. Seems to be shortages because of inflation scares." (English translation note: Disco = local supermarket chain; loo roll = toilet paper.) Another friend, this one an Argentine, replied on the same group chat: “We are not a country but a Game of Thrones spinoff.”
Poor Argentina. The porteño politicos never met a crisis they didn’t seek to make worse. So when global inflation ticked over 8... 10... 12% in developed nations, they saw it as a personal challenge, a threat to their undisputed authority on the matter. Official inflation down on the pampas is running at a white hot 60%... but unofficial reports put the number much, much higher. Hence the shortages. When people expect (in this case, correctly) that prices will be higher tomorrow, a penny saved quickly becomes a fraction of a penny earned.
Meanwhile, the locals have taken to the streets, pots and pans in hand, to protest the predictable actions of their political overlords. Here they were, out the front of the Casa Rosada (presidential palace) on their Independence Day, yesterday, July 9...
We never said Argentina was “bad,” only that it was a disaster. The situation is hopeless, as the Viennese used to say, but not serious. Which brings us to today’s feature essay...
"Journey to the End of the Earth"
By Joel Bowman
"Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which are useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."
~ Jules Verne, "Journey to the Center of the Earth"
When it comes to the commission of errors, few people on earth are as dedicated to the cause as the Argentines. They go about the business of fouling up their economy with such terrific gusto, one can only marvel that they have anything left to foul up at all. And yet, a good many expatriates – your roving editor among them – voluntarily choose to spend their most precious resource of all, ticking time, down at the end of the earth... Why? Are we, too, simple-minded crackpots... lunatics... gluttons for punishment? Almost certainly. But those are merely necessary character traits... not, in and of themselves, sufficient. Here, a closer look...
First, there’s the most obvious reason... the cost of living in Argentina, for anyone earning, saving or investing in dollars, is unusually, almost perversely low. When we embarked on our most recent trip north (a month or so ago), the spread between the official exchange rates and the “blue rate” (the unofficial rate you get on the black market), was already widening. Since then, it’s blown out even further.
To put it in crude figures... a bank will give you roughly 127 pesos for your mighty greenback. But, due to capital controls (Argentines are limited to $200 worth of foreign currency purchases per month, a measure designed to stop them from abandoning their paltry peso altogether), there exists a non-trivial premium for dollars on the black market.
(Everyone knows about these markets, by the by. The police even stand guard out front of the exchange houses, known as “cuevas” or caves, for added security. In many cases, the cuevas actually pay the officers for their vigilance. If you’re uncomfortable making the exchange on the street, most people know “a guy,” who will ride to your apartment on a motorcycle with a backpack full of cash to trade. And yes, in case you’re wondering, they also gladly accept crypto for fiat... at the black free market rate, of course.)
The Spread Widens: Before we departed, the cuevas were paying 220 pesos per dollar, a healthy premium over the official rate. But the peso is wobbly... and the market has all but lost confidence in the government’s ability to make good on its flighty financial promises. To wit, a fortnight ago, the state took $250 billion pesos ($2 billion) worth of inflation-linked notes and other securities to market. But demand is tepid, at best. Yields on the secondary market quickly lurched above 12%, for an all-in, inflation adjusted rate of 72%. Hardly assuring.
Needless to say, locals want out of their fast-depreciating fiat and into something (relatively) stable. But they cannot make the purchases easily through official channels. So the black market commands a premium.
Add to all that the ever present political uncertainty. Recently, the country’s economic minister just up and quit over the weekend. There’s a lot of political bickering in the ruling coalition party, and the minister’s replacement hails from the far-left Kirchnerista faction, which lives on making unfunded promises and printing money to pretend to pay for them.
Not good for the peso, in other words. And so, in the space of 48-72 hours after the minister’s resignation, the peso fell from 230 to the dollar... to 290. Trading has tightened up since then, but it’s still hovering around the 270 - 1 mark. In other words, measured in dollars, everything in the country just got a whole lot cheaper. About 25-30% cheaper. What does that mean, in practical terms?
Writes another friend, a Colombian, who lives in the same old, belle epoch-style building as we do, in Buenos Aires... “I had dinner at Don’s last night. Starters... steaks... desserts. The usual. $30k for three of us... and $10k of that went on wine.” A little context: “Don’s” (Don Julio’s), was rated the number one steakhouse in all of Latin America in 2020. It’s also #13 on the Top 50 Restaurants in the World. And our dear friend, who also happens to be the project manager on Bill’s wine partnership, is not shy with the carta de vinos.
At the current exchange rate, that works out to roughly $24/head... or $37 with (very expensive) wine. Lunch for two the next day at a popular Vietnamese joint, “with [many] beers,” was $7,500. About $14 per head.
It’s the same story for utilities... most of which are heavily subsidized by the state (legacy promises from past elections). Recall that it is winter in Buenos Aires. Our friends are graciously house sitting for us, using the facilities as they wish. In summer, the cost of electricity goes up (marginally, for AC) and the cost of gas goes down (no heating required), but it’s hardly worth noticing.
Reliable Crises: Such has been our experience, on and off, since we first moved to the Paris of the South, back in 2010. As any common sinner among us well knows, to err is only natural... but such inevitable mistakes and missteps are useful only if one takes the time to learn from them. And yet, so enthusiastic are Argentine politicians in the original commission of their errors, they rather appear to have forgotten the part about correcting for them. Hence their more or less decennial crises, their cyclical currency catastrophes and their tendency to oscillate wildly between the cheapest and the most expensive country in the world in which to live.
Owing to precisely these crises, there’s a kind of stoic resignation to the Argentina character, a hard won pragmatism that can only be earned through years of patience and endurance. They see their politicians for what they are... self-interested thieves enriching one and other at the public’s expense. Such an environment offers one a clarity of vision experienced in few other countries. In our native Australia, the vast majority of the population believe - and firmly - that the solution to life’s various ailments are to be found in some future political candidate. If only they “vote harder” in the next election, things will turn around. The nation is forever one law, one edict, one political promise away from turning the corner.
Argentina suffers from no such delusions. A short while back, your editor’s wife organized an online symposium for her classics community. The topic at hand: "The Fall of Nations and End of Empires." Among the guests speaking at her event was the modern historian, Niall Ferguson. “The thing about the Argentina people is they’ve been put through so much by political incompetence and corruption,” observed Mr. Ferguson during the session. “That in fact there’s quite a lot of resilience there.”
Having spent the past dozen or so years there, we can confidently confirm Mr. Ferguson’s assertion. We don’t know a single person who doesn’t have a ready supply of cash on hand (held in dollars and/or euros; not pesos). Most have a stash of gold, too, however modest... including bullion and smaller coins.
Moreover, everyone is aware of the various currency exchange rates... and is perfectly capable of the kind of mental math that hasn’t been taught in developed world schools in a generation or more. Even people struggling to get by, who earn barely enough to stretch from one week to the next, have a stronger grasp of real world economics than, say, your average PhD student in the west (who, in enthusiastic demonstration of his ignorance, will happily plunge himself into enormous debt in order to waste years of his youth learning about the finer points of Modern Monetary Theory and assorted other Keynesian claptrap.)
Not so for the Argentine nanny... Uber driver... grape picker... kitchen hand... She understands supply and demand in a way that few pointy-headed econometricians will ever comprehend. When her government tells her she is not permitted to buy more than US$200/month of foreign currency, she understands immediately that capital controls mean a black market premium on dollars, euros, etc. So, she pools her meagre savings with her fellow niñeras and finds a gringo, with peso expenses, who’s willing to make the exchange with her at a favorable rate for them both.
Where she can, she makes her purchases in “quotas” (installments), relying on her elected officials to safely destroy the value of her currency so that when repayments come due, they are worth “centavos on the peso.” She pays her taxes late and for the same reason. And she works for cash in hand, keeping a small kitty for everyday expenses, and converting the rest into durable goods. She is a responsible, reliable, honest, hard-working, antifragile individual... and she is a pleasure to employ.
On which note... True Wealth: In answer to the common, misguided charge: aren’t you just taking advantage of the situation? It’s perhaps worth pointing out... we do not make the prices. Nor do we inflate/destroy the currency... or decide the exchange rates… or make economic policy. We simply pay the bills as they come due. We also support a handful of locals – Argentines, Bolivians and Paraguayans – directly, good people whom we employ in various capacities, and whom we happily recommend to other gringos, who in turn are only too glad to compensate them at above market rates.
Many times over the years have we heard that cringing wince from the conspicuously compassionate brigade, angels of mercy who are so empathetic to the plight of “poor people” that they hope never to have to meet them, lest their oversensitive hearts explode.
Alas, poverty doesn’t go away by ignoring it or by merely “feeling bad” because it exists. Rather, it is alleviated, to the extent that it is, only by win-win, value-adding commerce... by supporting honest people doing excellent work... by patroning their restaurants, visiting their bodegas, buying their clothes, hiring their services, shaking their hands, looking them in the eye and even bringing them into your family home.
Living in so-called “poor” countries (which in so many non-financial senses are often among the richest nations on earth), one begins to understand how truly vulgar ostentatious wealth, and how noble the work of a simple man, can be. Our seven year-old daughter knows what real poverty looks like, up close... and she is aware how fortunate she is not to be in that position. But she also sees how many people in “rich” nations take their material wealth for granted or, worse still, derive their sense of self worth from the type of car they drive or the size of the house they live in.
When locals ask, as they often do, why on earth we would forgo our life in stable, predictable, functional Australia for one in chaotic, unpredictable, dysfunctional Argentina, we reply, “We came for the steak and wine. And we stayed... for the steak and wine.” But the truth is, it’s the priceless, personal relationships that make a man truly rich… and the experiences he enjoys with those dear to him that he most cherishes in this life. As for running out of “loo roll,” at the rate the Argentine government is printing up paper money, one shouldn’t expect that problem to last for too long, either."
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