After a brutal 6am flight from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, I have settled in nicely at a nice bar with good wifi in the Recoleta area of BA… across the street from something called the Playboy Men's Bar. I'm hunkered in, trying to finish the November issue of TDV tonight. As a self-employed person, it is always good to give yourself incentives so my incentive is that if I can get the November issue out by tonight, then I will go for a drink at the Playboy bar.
If not, then I will punish myself by returning to my hotel and getting up early to finish it off tomorrow. In either case, it'll be inside subscriber's email boxes within the next 2-24 hours.
FIRST THOUGHTS ON ARGENTINA
It's been about four years since I was last in Buenos Aires (I was in Salta province, via Santa Cruz Bolivia in the spring) and I have to say, it seems just a tad seedier this time around. The ATMs in Argentina are always a gamble… their banks have gone “tits up”, to use the technical term, so many times in the last few decades that it is always a gamble whether an ATM will work and/or it will have international connections.
Many people ask, why would you want to build a house in Argentina given what a mess its socialist government is? The answer is, simply, that I prefer governments where I actually live to be a giant mess. The alternative is a country like the US where the government is so all encompassing and overpowering that they don't even need humans to do their dirty work anymore. Drones and robots are now programmed to track down and kill people around the world on behalf of the criminal enterprise known as the US Government now.
Would I ever put more than a few pesos in an Argentine bank? Are you kidding? And would I ever place investment capital here? Of course not! But, would I live here? Sure. This is one of the most disfunctional governments on earth. This blog is probably scanned by the US Government daily… the Argentine Government? They are too busy hyperinflating the peso and their public officials are too busy drawing up thousands of useless laws (that everyone ignores) and taking penny-ante bribes to acknowledge my existence.
Here's one. Upon entering Argentina today I was told that because I was entering with a Canadian passport, I had to pay them $70. The reason? It's reciprocal. The xenophobic and criminal Canadian Government charges Argentines $70 to go to Canada so they do the same. I don't have a problem with that. I was just angry with myself that I didn't bring my other passport from a discrete Caribbean island that no one cares about and I could have avoided the charge.
When I paid, I snapped a photo of this regulation:
If you can't read the blurry photo it is a sign for the “Consumer Favourable Rounding Off Act” and states, “Whenever there is a difference lower than 5 cents from the total payable amount and it is not possible to reinburse the relevant change such difference shall be in favor of consumers”.
Wow, good thing the government enacted that law! I'd hate to be caught in a situation where there was a less than 5 cent difference between what is owed to me and what is payable and, god forbid, we'd have to speak to another human being and work out the problem amongst ourselves!
But, this is how a socialist government is. They assume that government needs to regulate and manipulate every transaction to make life better for everybody! But, what they always end up doing, is making things worse for everyone.
SNN LIVE
I better get back to finalizing the November issue of TDV. The Playboy club beckons. In the meantime, here was an interview I did with the great Shelly Kraft of SNN Live in Spokane recently. We talked about a number of things including Occupy Wall Street.
The November issue of TDV will either be out later tonight, if Jeff meets his Playboy Club timetable in Buenos Aires, or at the latest tomorrow. Subscribe now to receive it and all of the premium content the TDV crew provides to help you survive and prosper during the collapse of the US dollar based financial system.
