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Read this page as a warning to America what may happen here.1-10-02 Floating exchange rate is about 1:55 pesos to the dollar. Your dollar denomimated debts have just doubled, your pension is worthless, your probably out of a job and lots of luck if you need insulin.
As of 1/31/02 "peace" has returned to the capital and people are in lines up to 3 city blocks long hoping
to exchange rapidly depreciating pesos for dollars.( 1;80 to the dollar or 2 to the dollar in money exchanges.)
The "magic of the free market "has come to Argentina.
Power shortages cripple Argentine economy 4-4-04
The tragedy continues to evolve.
Barter: the only way to survive-coming to a neighborhood near you in America?
Confiscatory Deflation: The Case of Argentina
Nice technical explanation of the country's money woes
Starving people butcher live cattle in wrecked truck
Grandmothers forced into prostitution etc.
Argentina and the IMF - the art of falling apart 6-22-02
well written history of the mess by The Ecologist
Richard Douthwaite discussing Argentina's use of auxiliary currencies including LETS systems and provincial currencies during their most recent currency crisis.(Audio)
http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/06-4om/Ballve.html
August '06 Workers' cooperatives take over factories and recesitate industries
Please be patient-lots of pictures on this page. They may load slowly.
Argentina:A country that has been mortgaged to where even the educated middle class are starving.
Let's put what happened into perspective: Billions are lent to a government and private individuals in the name of the "people".* Capital flight is tremendous. Money pours into Swiss bank accounts and overseas real estate. A war here, a brutal dictatorship there, several new currencies along with all the tricks leave people in a very bad way financially. More money is lent to the government in the name of the "people". Weimar-Republic like inflation occurs. Wall Street to the rescue! Loans, not investment, pour in from NYC. The "Argentine Miracle" of the late 90's begins. To "stop inflation", The Argentine Peso is pegged to the dollar at a one to one exchange rate. Most public and private debts are then denominated in dollars. People are paid in pesos. *Click on this if you want the technical details of the loans.
The bankers through their front
organization, the International Monetary Fund, want to collect
interest on the national debt-maybe even the principle later. More
and more of the government's income and hence its expenditures goes
to pay the compounding interest. in exchange for further loans, the
bankers blackmail the government into eliminating many public
services like libraries, recreation facilities, etc. Then they cause
the government to privatize (sell off) public things like highways,
railroads, the national airline, the telephone company-all of which
were once owned by the citizenry. Price supports for food and
medicine go next.The poor are always screwed of course. But then the
vibrant well educated middle class start to really suffer too.
Further "austerity" measures come into play to divert more to the
bankers. Saleries and pensions are slashed by up to 13%.
Peoples' standard of
living starts its slide into the abyss. They go hungry-but
a debt is a debt right? People are panicking and
doing the unthinkable-They're lining up to withdraw their
own dollars from the bank because they know that a
devaluation or a seizing of savings and pensions to pay the
bankers is coming.
Government can't allow people to have their own money because the
international bankers want their interest! A bank holiday and limit
on how much one can withdraw. Gotta keep enough dollars on hand to
pay this month's installment so that more loans can come forward and
paper over the old ones.
Even the world bankers have had enough. "No New Loans are Forthcoming" they say.
It's foreclosure time! On the whole country! The vultures are circling. You are gonna be able to pick up a nice luxury apartment in Buenos Aires -the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere- for nothing (if you have dollars.) And the people that couldn't pay their dollar denominated mortgages? What about them?
Oh... they'll just turn in their keys and go off and seek new opportunities somewhere else-after all it's a free market and if they worked and invested in private pensions, as most did, maybe they can go live in a shack in Patagonia.
But then the government raids pensions by freezing the accounts and substituting government treasury bonds or "debt repayment bonds' for people's pensions. what are these? Best we can figure is that you get part of your pension back when the bond matures in X years: meanwhile it earns a low rate of interest for you while your money is paying the 18% or so to the World Bankers.
Official Unemployment climbs to 18% and the government austerity measures cut public spending by a further 20%.
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Further demonstrations by the general populace.
The president resigns. His successor is already tainted by scandal. The finance minister resigns.
Cheering demonstrators burn down the finance ministry.
Bet you would like to watch some movies of all the action pictured above? There's an hour long video about all this (in Spanish), great visuals though. "Memorias Del Saqueo" or "Memories of the looting", Fernando Solanas 2003) Google it.
To try and pacifiy the
bankers, public employees and others are now going to be
paid in
a new
currency, The
Argentino,
that will exist alongside both the Peso and the dollar which
will be reserved for outgoing payments to the
bankers. What about mortgages
and company debts denominated in dollars?
How do you pay them if you're paid in monopoly money like the
Argentino?
(Forget going to the banks to withdraw your savings in dollars.
They're only allowing you to withdraw $1,000 per month-at least for the time being.)
Your pension has now been replace with government bonds-hard to buy food with those.
Default on the debt is most highly desired by the People.
The first missed payment was on Jan 3. Argentina is technically in Default.
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Need medicine to stay alive? Tough luck-no one is selling it or sending it into the country. So now the pharmacies are looted. |
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The Argentino printing presses are running at full speed.
So that's where it stands. Poor Argentina.
They'll never be able to repay "their" $132 Billion debt.
Default: the unthinkable (to the world financial community)-something has to be done!
But, Hey, that's what American Taxpayers are for Right?
We rescued Mexico, we rescued
Long Term Capital...maybe we can rescue Wall Street?
(That was written before the secret 7.7 TRILLION taxpayer dollar bailout of the banks on Wall Street).
Hungry people
do the funniest things! See signs in
background. Some
win, some lose. Order must be
maintained A job for life:
A retired
public employee sells newspapers. We
have been destroyed
By
Julia
Marini, a 73-year-old pensioner living in Buenos
Aires
"I
retired in 1993, at the age of 65, from my job at
the Goethe Institute in Buenos Aires..."
Get food while you can-------get rich off the exchange
rate------------get food if you can
Their future
sacrificed to pay the bankers in
NYC
A financial criminal
at work
Day to day financial details behind the rage.
The well-oiled machine
at work Let 'em burn a few
Vatican banks but not CITIBANK!
More
Argentine news in Spanish
http://argentina.indymedia.org Here's
a nice explanation of how SAPS (structural
adjustment programs) work. But will the patient
live? Example: our how
to raise your own food
page The thousands of Buenos Aires backyards
with good soil used to store cars, play basketball, build swimming
pools and other useless friperies that we have seen: Now they're
going hungry-they should have
planted gardens
yesterday.
Now this couldn't happen here in America could it? This is one reason we wrote the Overcoming Consumerism web site, to show methods that people can use to help immunize themself from economic disasters like Argentina.
Several directors of the world bank have resigned in protest. If you really are interested in this institution you should read their farewell speeches: Joseph Stieglitz and Herman Daly.
Ten Years later things are on the mend in Argentina. Short version, they told the International Monetary Fund and the parasitical bankers in New York to go to hell, they were not going to pay them the debt taken out by criminals in the Argentine government who were no longer in power.From 2002 onward, Argentina grown nearly twice as fast as Brazil, and has sported one of the highest growth rates in the world. Its success is not dependent on a commodities boom. It has increased social spending from 10.3% of GDP to 14.2% of GDP Inequality has fallen. Poverty and extreme poverty have fallen by roughly 2/3. What is particularly striking is how quickly Argentina’s economy rebounded after its default.
From a paper by Mark Weisbrot, Rebecca Ray, Juan A. Montecino, and Sara Kozameh:
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/argentina-success-2011-10.pdf
This is a valuable lesson for Europe and for America.
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