A Trillion Times Less

 

Commies always want more.

More out of the able. More submission. More loyalty. More centralization. More welfare. More government. More dependence.

But that’s what you should expect from an organism that eats itself. It’s a cannibal. And to borrow some eternally positive but ultimately vapid politically correct rhetoric one might hear on The View, cannibals aren’t exactly “prosperity forward.”

That’s because the whole philosophy is blind to what drives prosperity in the first place. Production, innovation, and wealth doesn’t trickle down from the top. It percolates up from the bottom. Prosperity arises from the motivation of the empowered individual.

Nonetheless, communism relentlessly rears its malignant head time and time again. And whether it calls itself Marxism, communism, socialism, fascism, social democracy, liberal progressive, social justice, or woke, commies always set their victims (all commies are victims) squarely on the path to ruin.

When a country’s citizens, resources, and incentives have been bled dry, that path to ruin inevitably requires more of something else — money.

And for that perpetual socialist basket case Argentina, that more has destroyed their currency by a factor of 1 trillion…

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina

Argentina was once a prosperous country.

Prior to 1930, Argentina experienced a period of prosperity and political stability, known as the “Argentine Belle Époque” or the “Argentine Golden Age”. The country experienced rapid economic growth and modernization, driven by a wave of immigration, expansion of the agricultural sector, and industrialization.

For more than a century after gaining independence from Spain, it was also stable with peaceful transitions of power between different political parties and a relatively low level of social unrest. The country’s political system was a federal democratic republic, with a strong executive branch, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary.

But then the commies came.

In the 1930s, a populist movement led by Juan Perón rose to power. And then the handouts for victims began.

He launched social welfare programs, nationalized key industries, and after wrecking the country, was eventually overthrown in 1955 by what would be the first of many military coups.

But once on that path, the country remained on that path.

The Road to a Trillion Times Less

In the 1960s, the cost of social welfare programs and infrastructure projects drove government borrowing through the roof, which corresponded with a surge in the money supply and, of course, soaring prices. Also, the various flavors of socialists began fighting each other, Peronists included, until finally the military said “enough” again in 1969 and installed new management.

And to deal with the consequences of decades of more money, the new government did what every government that falls into the socialist trap must always do — devalue the currency to wipe out the debts. In this instance, by a factor of 100.

Suffice it to say, Argentina has never managed to step off this path of socialist spending, debt, coups, devaluations, and debt wipe-outs. According to data from the Banco Central de la República Argentina, Argentina’s central bank, the peso has been devalued 4 times in steps varying from a factor of 100 to 10,000 resulting in a total step down from its original value by a factor of 1 trillion.

I laid out those steps in the graph below (every step higher being an exponential step lower in value) but the scale is tough to comprehend. It’s quite literally like the difference between Earth and the Milky Way or the width of a grain of sand and the Great Wall of China.

And it’s not like the currency stopped collapsing after their last formal devaluation in 1989. Since then, the Argentinian peso to U.S. dollar exchange rate has fallen by 118,264%.

Now, you don’t have to be a bonafide socialist republic to go down this route. The principle of printing more money to pull even more people into more centralized government dependence applies as easily to countries that do a better job of pretending at capitalism.

As I stated a couple of weeks ago, the U.S., U.K., Europe, Japan, etc. are really just different versions of one big commie ‘ism. They are all tripping invariably towards the same path that Argentina stumbled upon because they all pull power to the center through government spending paid for by central banks. Among them all, Japan is the closest to having its currency collapse. But they will all fall victim to global conditions that no longer support the dollar-backed, full-fiat debt binge that defined globalism’s last gasp.

Think Free, Be Free.

P.S. Join us — We talk currencies, prosperity & how to thrive in the market on my FREE Prosperity Pub Community on Telegram.