Bug spray and vanilla extract flying off the shelves in South America amid dengue fever outbreak expected to top record 4.5 million cases from 2023

Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina are the hardest hit, with more than 3.5 million cases, 83% of which are concentrated in Brazil, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

More.

You can't put bitcoin in your pocket like gold and silver, and gold doesn't require 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually for its existence

Crock of shit this bitcoin is. Same for anything digital.

But crypto has a dirty little secret that is very relevant to the real world: it uses a lot of energy. How much energy? Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, currently consumes an estimated 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually — more than the entire country of Argentina, population 45 million. Producing that energy emits some 65 megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually — comparable to the emissions of Greece — making crypto a significant contributor to global air pollution and climate change.     

More.

 

Economic model lol: Argentina has defaulted, what, nine times since 1816?

 Frontrunner threatening to upend economic model...

Oh yeah. That would be horrible.

Nine-time debt defaulter Argentina (not shown hehe) . . . AND Al Roker, wow!

 

Trump-admiring libertarian's surprise primary win upends Argentina...

Dateline Trump World Golf Club Dubai: President offers to resign if he can keep Air Force One

Ehhhh ... puto! In the race for most fines for anti-gay slurs, Hispanic soccer fans have everyone else beat

Well, Spain was ruled by Muslims from 711 to 1492 AD.

From the story here:

Homophobia and homophobic chants are not exclusive to Mexico fans. Fifa issued 51 disciplinary actions over homophobia during 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Of these, 11 were handed to the Mexican federation, with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and Peru also receiving multiple fines. Fifa additionally cited Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Greece, Hungary and Serbia once each for homophobic chants.

But there is no doubt the chant is most prominent among Mexico fans. “To call your opponent homosexual is definitely along a spectrum of machismo, whereby your opponent is weaker – less masculine,” says Joshua Nadel, author of Fútbol!: Why Soccer Matters in Latin America.

As socialist Venezuela starves, remember Bernie Sanders once said that's the American Dream

Equal poverty for all!

Here, August 2011:

These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?

Noted Progressive Calls Second-Great-Depression-Excuse For TARP "Crap"

Dean Baker, here:

[T]he commonly claimed "second Great Depression" scenario is, to use a technical economic term, "crap."  The first Great Depression, by which I mean a decade of double-digit unemployment was not locked in stone by the mistakes made at its onset. There was nothing that would have prevented the government from having the sort of massive stimulus spending that eventually got us back to full employment (a.k.a. World War II) in 1931 instead of 1941 and without the war. The fact that we remained in a depression for more than a decade was due to inadequate policy response.

Don't you see? There are no problems which Keynesian monetarism cannot solve, it's just that FDR didn't practice them then,  and that Obama is not practicing them now.

Otherwise Baker makes the case for clearing the system the quick and dirty way, the way free markets are supposed to work:

The place to look for insight on this question is Argentina, which went the financial collapse route in December of 2001. This was the real deal. Banks shut, no access to ATMs, no one knowing when they could get their money out of their bank, if they ever could.

This collapse led to a plunge in GDP for three months, followed by three months in which the economy stabilized and then six years of robust growth. It took the country a year and a half to make up the output lost following the crisis.

While there is no guarantee that the Bernanke-Geithner team would be as competent as Argentina's crew, if we assume for the moment they are, then the relevant question would be if it is worth this sort of downturn to clean up the financial sector once and for all. I'm inclined to say yes, but I certainly could understand that others may view the situation differently.


Once again, the domestic analogy would be 1920, but that's so, I don't know, modern.

President Mussolini Anyone?

Investors.com calls the prospect of the Dodd bill becoming law nothing short of fascism:

As it stands, Dodd's bill amounts to a nationalization of our financial sector. It creates permanent bailouts in the U.S. for any company that regulators consider to be in danger of default. That includes any company "substantially engaged in activities ... that are financial in nature."

In other words, virtually any big company, since many industrial giants — GM and GE leap to mind — have their own finance units.

This would give sweeping discretionary control over the economy to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Treasury — the very regulators who, asleep at the switch in 2005 and 2006, let the U.S. economic locomotive run off the rails.

If the Dodd bill passes intact, regulators can essentially shut down any company at will and force it into receivership. This style of state-directed capitalism has been tried before — in Italy under Mussolini and, later, in Argentina under Peron. It didn't work then, it won't work now.

Read the rest, here.