Alone Among Millions

Argentines decamp for the bikini beaches, plus snippets from our first Notes investment event, cooling inflation and more...

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Another week rolls by down in the Paris of the South. All the beautiful people have decamped, left town for the trendy beaches in Brazil and Uruguay...or the cool mountain air down in Patagonia.

Similar to the city’s northern cousin, which empties out during the month of August (first established as the Feriae Augusti in 18 BC by Emperor Augustus)... so January is summer holidays here in the southern hemisphere. Anyone who can escape the sweltering heat, does.

Which leaves your editor... neither beautiful nor trendy... and allergic to crowds in any case... practically alone in a city of millions... left to ply his weary trade.

Fortunately, we had plenty of company this week... if not exactly in person.

If you joined us for our inaugural Investing in the End of the World virtual summit on Wednesday, you saw our old friends Rick Rule, Eric Fry and Byron King on a panel for the first time together since... well, a long, long time. It felt a little like getting the band back together.

Here’s a few words from Mr. Byron King who, like every geologist worth his salt, just happened to have some metallic props on hand…

And here’s Eric Fry, our former colleague from over at The Daily Reckoning (along with Bill Bonner) and The Rude Awakening, which we wrote together from Lower Manhattan under the rather irreverent tagline “Hot Coffee in the Face of Wall Street.”

Eric has specialized in international investments for the past four decades and notices a tendency of US investors, in particular, to remain inward looking… even when spectacular opportunity, such as he sees here in Argentina, beckons. Eric:

We’ll have more snippets and insights from the confab over the coming days…

[Nota Bene: If you’re already a Notes Member, you can view the entire audio-video recording, and download the full, 67-page transcript, including all companies and tickers mentioned by our guests, right here.

If you’re not already a Notes Member, but would like to unlock these and other resources… including advanced notice of our next live event, tentatively scheduled for April… feel free to join us here, today…

Inflation Cools

In the meantime, inflation continues to cool here… even as the weather heats up. The latest figures from local consultancy, Equilibra, show the rolling, 4-week inflation average for Food and Beverages fell to 2.1% last week. The firm forecasts 2.2% for the month of January.

Now, if that seems like a high monthly number, it’s probably because it is! But when compared to the 20.6% month over month inflation from this time last year… well, it’s quite a breath of fresh air. Why, restaurants have even started putting prices on their menus again, a sure sign of hope for the future.

And for our dear readers who wondered aloud in the comments section under a recent article, “What happens to all the former government non-workers, now that Javier Milei has given them their marching orders?” We present the following graph. What you see here, roughly translated, is the third consecutive month of growth in salaried employment registered in the private sector.

“A trend of recovery in jobs is beginning to consolidate,” as Sr. Milei himself noted in an X post earlier today.

According to data provided by the Labor Indicators Survey (EIL) and the Argentine Integrated Pension System (SIPA), there were three consecutive months of net creation of formal private employment, including 17,000 workers who have found employment in private Argentine companies.

Hmm… a recovery in wage growth and employment in dynamic, private markets… to offset the collapse in bloated state bureaucracies and government non-worker payrolls. What’s not to like?

It’s almost as though free markets, free minds and free people are preferable to central planning, know-it-all political parasites and 75-years of grinding Peronism.

We’ll keep an eye on the situation from down here on the frontlines.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. As always, a big thanks to our dear Notes members for helping us bring the message of free markets, free minds and free people to readers across all 50 US states and in 135 countries around the world (special shoutout to our new readers who tuned in for this week’s inaugural Investing in the End of the World event!)

In many ways, the story here in Argentina is providing a beacon of hope for liberty-minded people around the world. We regularly receive emails from folks up and down the Americas, across Europe, in Australia and New Zealand. Their message, “If it can happen in Argentina… maybe it can happen here, too?”

Here’s what a few of our Notes members are saying…

Thanks to ALL our Notes members for supporting our work. The future is bright with you on board. We may be small, but we are legion. And we are bringing down the mainstream narrative… one brick at a time.

If you’re not yet a member, but would like to join our growing Notes community and help support the ideas of free markets, free minds and free people, please consider becoming a member today. Thanks in advance ~ JB