Re: [A-List] Spanish capitalists, US, Argentina

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

On February 9, 2004 Nestor Gorojovksy wrote:

"Some contributor to this list has had first hand knowledge of the
kind of hosts/partners these "investors" had here in Buenos Aires.
Perhaps professional reasons force this contributor to silence, but I
am sure that I will count with the contributor's nod if I say that as
from their domestic partners one can realize that these "investors"
were in fact highwaymen in slight disguise.."

Nestor, c'est moi?  If so - and I do indeed have "first hand knowledge
of the kind of hosts/partners these 'investors' had in Buenos Aires" -
no "silence" is intended.  I agree completely with your characterization
of these "investors," and of the ways in which they obtained their
"investments" - it was "Russian reform" all over again with a Latin American
beat, no question.  And no tears are on offer from this anarcho-capitalist
for their losses.

What does trouble me is the bond market default - but only a portion of of
it.
Most bond market investors, esp. international investors, are institutions
and their
"stake" is made up in part of the money of the "lumpeninvestoriat" and
pension
funds, which means these "little guys" will pay a price they really can't
afford.
However, that is not to say I stand to scold Argentina, not at all.  (How
did
"little guy" bank clients feel when their savings were devalued by 2/3
overnight,
and then locked up by the state?  And their national assets in foreign hands
with
zip return to them or the nation as a whole? They felt "poorer," and
betrayed - rightly so.)

The moral angle comes in from the side of Fedgov, which taxes savings - the
worst sort of public policy in a consumer-mad nation now busily chowing
down its seed corn, or any nation for that matter.  IRAs and 401Ks - which
are
the only way an average person can protect savings from taxation until
retirement
just when they are needed - have delivered month after month a conveyer belt
of
money to Wall Street...current "privatization" proposals for social security
would
make this bad situation even worse, delivering a bonanza to the paper
economy.
Combined with Easy Al Greenscam's lunatic monetary policies, corruption has
and will
continue to sustain Wall Street's schemes.  (Corrupting the medium of
exchange is
quite possibly the most direct way to corrupt a culture.  Easy money always
brings
out the fraudsters.  I recall Lenin had something smart to say along those
lines.)

But the lumpeninvestoriat in this country hasn't a clue - by design.  They
trust
Wall Street's "advisors," "money managers," and investment banks, and bought
into the "diversification" program fully paid up.  It really is all
mumbo-jumbo to
them as they have no serious education in the most simplistic economics, and
their
antennae stand silent at notions like a home being "an investment" (it's a
consumer
item, not an investment) or "unexpected inflation" or "barbaric remnant," ad
infinitem.
I still remember circa 1970s when high school students in my home county in
Colorado
were relieved of the requirement of studying 2nd year algebra, but were
compelled to
complete a course called "consumer economics," which was really designed to
accustom
them to living happily with debt.

Now, I fully subscribe to the "Buyer Beware" exhortation, but that doesn't
make me in
favor of wasting years of a young person's life in schools of indoctrination
and then
sending them naked into the real world of profit and loss in a paper
economy.  But to
educate them would threaten the state, and its looting and controlling
systems.

So, instead, we get an abused population of average Joes who are susceptible
to the old
line about how "generous" the US is with foreign aid, and how they just got
ripped off!
And then the IMF "mediates" between the unfortunate class of bag holders and
the
targeted native population of the aid recipient - always, always to the
benefit of the elite.

And this rotten scenario has been repeated again and again in the post-war
world.  Argentina's
refusal to cough up the cash is a necessary step to their own recovery, but
is really a gift
to the rest of the world in that it presents a significant challenge to the
IMF and Fedgov's monetary
predations.

Argentina as a resource-economy stands to enjoy an excellent 10-, possibly
20-year cycle of
rising prosperity.  But there's no such probability for the US, whose people
will soon discover
that the only thing supporting the US dollar is their labor and their assets
as they eat every bit
of fraudulent paper Fedgov emitted in their name and on their backs as "all
debts clear."  The
contemplation of the number of aging, poor people that will inhabit the US
in ten years' time brings
me no satisfaction - nor does the thought of those all around the world who
will be afflicted further
through wars, devaluations, and defaults by this process, though with
smaller governments and armies
to sustain and various national assets (in the broad sense) they will stand
to regain their footing far
sooner than the US.

Anne



----- Original Message -----
From: "Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 10:25 AM
Subject: [A-List] Spanish capitalists, US, Argentina