En Guardian!
Lies, Damned Lies and Presstitution
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”
~ Mark Twain
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...
A dear reader sends us the latest from the popular, UK-based rag, The Guardian. At first we thought we must have offended our reader in some way... then we realized the column was from the paper’s funny pages (or what The Guardian calls its “Opinion” section).
Equal parts delighted and grateful, we read on for a guaranteed chuckle. And The Guardian’s clown parade did not disappoint. In fact, the piece began with a subtle enough punchline, right there in the headline:
The Guardian view on Argentina’s austerity year: painful cuts, rising poverty and a geopolitical gamble
Only an outlet so lacking in self-awareness as The Guardian would freely advertise that it operates a newsroom based on consensus, Orwellian-style mono-opinion. “The” Guardian view (singular, apparently) carried the creepy, collective and – dare we say? – cowardly byline: “Editorial”
The paper then patiently waited six whole words before drawing that predictable, hackneyed, thimble-depth comparison between Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, and US president-elect, Donald Trump.
“The affinity is obvious,” asserted Editorial, noticing that, “both are political outsiders united by extreme-right rhetoric and a penchant for anarchic capitalism.”
Obvious, yes, for anyone still shackled to the childish paradigm of Left vs. Right politics... or whose analysis turns to paralysis immediately after hearing “ouchie” words.
It would be impossible to go through all the meaningful differences between Messers. Trump and Milei in one pithy Note, but to underscore just a few...
Distinct Differences
Sr. Milei is, in fact, an anarcho-capitalist, who necessarily identifies the State as the problem. Mr. Trump, whatever you may think of him, sees the State (his State, to be sure) as the solution. This is not a distinction without a difference, gentle reader, but rather one with startling real world consequences. For instance...
Whereas Mr. Trump added $7.8 trillion to the US national debt during his first term, Javier Milei has spent his first year in office actively building reserve bank dollar funds in an effort to sure up the nation’s finances.
Mr. Trump, as the self-styled “King of Debt,” ran non-trivial budget deficits in each of his four years in office: $665 billion in 2017; $779 billion in 2018; $984 billion in 2019; and $3.13 trillion in 2020, mostly for so-called Covid “relief” measures. (Like mailing hundreds of millions of stimmie checks to US citizens, dead and alive.)
Sr. Milei, by contrast, implemented a strict “zero-tolerance” position vis-à-vis deficit spending, enabling him to deliver the nation’s first annual fiscal surplus... in 123 years. It’s literally the opposite of the US Government’s modus operandi of spending more than it has, whoever happens to be in charge.
Not same-same, in other words. And not just different. Opposite.
Moreover, while Trump promised to “drain the swamp” during his first presidency, the DC monster actually grew to even more grotesque proportions. Between December 2016 and December 2020, Mr. Trump’s administration added 65,000 workers to the federal payroll.
Real Chainsaw Economics
Overall, spending under Trump’s presidency nearly doubled from the previous (already gargantuan) administration.
It’s true that some of that cash Niagara came as a result of the bedwetting response to The Covid... but spending had already increased by $5.3 trillion before anyone had ever heard of Anthony “The Science” Fauci and his band of criminal Big Pharma insiders.
Meanwhile, down here at the other End of the World, Sr. Milei actually executed much of what The Donald only promised to do...
On Day 1 in office, the man with the motosierra slashed the number of federal ministries from 18... to 8. He promptly laid off 30,000 government non-workers... and put tens of thousands more on notice. Then he audited the entire public sector, including those Marxist factories known here as “public universities.”
He also criminalized seigniorage (making money printing to pay for political promises a jailable offense)... overhauled the entire federal tax system... and privatized vast swathes of the public sector. We could go on (and promise to, in fact, in future Notes)...
As legendary investor, Rick Rule, told attendees during our inaugural Investing in the End of the World summit last week, “To compare [Trump’s] Department of Government Efficiency with what Milei has done merely condemns the Argentines to damnation by faint praise.”
“I think that any comparison is almost unfair to Milei,” chimed Eric Fry, speaking on the same virtual stage. “Milei is doing something that's wholly other, wholly other. I think the Milei miracle, the Milei phenomenon, is really an outlier that belongs to itself and only to itself.”
Continued Rick: “I think what's interesting about Milei is that lots of people over history said they were going to cut government. And Milei did it. You know, Thatcher was going to cut government. She slowed the growth. Spending still increased. Reagan was going to cut government. Nope. He just slowed the growth. Milei said he was going to cut government. He cut expenditures by 30%. That took me completely by surprise, I have to say.”
[NB: Notes members can watch the entire, in-depth discussion – and read the full transcript – of our inaugural event, right here.]
Of course, we would dearly love to see Mr. Trump take a page (or even a whole chapter!) from the Milei playbook. And maybe the second go-around really will be different... or not.
But as Al Gore once observed, either astutely or inadvertently, “a zebra doesn’t change its spots.”
There’s plenty more we didn’t get to in The Guardian’s hilarious article...alas, we’ve run out of space for today. We’ll have to pick it up again Thursday.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. As mentioned in this space before, America's trust in mass media is plumbing all time lows, with less than a third of recent Gallup Poll respondents expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”
According to Gallup, 2023-2024 was the third consecutive year that more U.S. adults registered no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another third (33%) of Americans expressed “not very much” confidence.
It is against this well-earned decline in trust that we offer a special shoutout to our dear Notes Members; we’re ever grateful for your generous and ongoing support. As you know, Notes is an entirely independent, reader-supported publication (as in, we accept no advertising, bow to no boss and bend no knee).
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Joel, another wonderful missive. You point out things that I would never notice otherwise, as in the editorial. Thanks for broadening my understanding and knowledge. Stay independent so you don’t end up like the media in the chart. God bless!
Sorry Joel, I had to forward this essay to a disparate group of friends who include die-hard Trumpers & deep staters. What interesting times, right? I have an excuse. Au moment je suis en train de boire ¨La Fin Du Monde,¨ ma bière prépèrée du Canada 🇨🇦.