Latin America

The fat little bastard even boasted that "See? They've run out of pesos!"

This is Nero-level incompetence and insanity.

To him, impoverishing his own, already-struggling people (whom he seems to hate - no doubt over his nationalist father's being so brutal to him as a child) is a "small price to pay" to facilitate his pipe dream of dollarizing the country.

The idea being, that the only way he can compensate the 50 trillion pesos in circulation (deposits and cash) is by forcing people and businesses to burn through them (!).

Big Oil and the Fortune 500, meanwhile, are rubbing their hands at the prospect of being able to buy up state assets at fire-sale prices - which, of course, is easiest if the country is destitute.

The whole fracas will ultimately go down as just another calamity Argentina will have to recover from.

Always making up for lost time (or trying to), rather than actually growing and developing. And this time, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Thanks as always for your observations, and for your very nice words in Malaise's post earlier. You're very kind.

Stay warm!