Enter Bizarro Land

Milei "unclamps" the peso, touchdown in Greece, the trouble with kissing cousins and plenty more...

(The School of Athens, by Raphael (1511). Source: Public Domain)

“My contempt for the state is infinite.”

~ Javier Milei (from an interview with The Economist, 2024)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: The Cyclades, Greece...

The cock crows...

From the valley below, the sound carries across the planted fields, rising up to stir us from fitful slumber. A cool, morning breeze blows in through the open blue shutters. The salty air, infused with the scent of honeysuckle and sage, mingles with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, wafting down the hall.

Our first thought: “Where on earth are we?”

More on our recent wanderings, as promised to patient readers, in a moment. First, a quick update from the other End of the World, Argentina. Writes a dear friend, from Buenos Aires:

It seems we’ve officially entered bizarro land, in which the official rate is now higher than the blue [unofficial] rate...

Wait, what’s going on here?

Liberation Day

A few weeks ago, President Javier Milei announced his own brand of “Liberation Day”... only, unlike President Trump’s version, the Argentine anarcho-capitalist’s idea of liberation involved less government intervention in the economy, not more.

On April 14, Milei took his trademark chainsaw to “el cepo,” taking the next bold step in rolling back the state’s notorious – and ruinous – currency controls.

In place since 2011, el cepo (or “the clamp”) was essentially a set of restrictions imposed on the amount of foreign currency Argentine businesses and individuals were allowed to purchase. The scheme, supposedly enforced as a measure to contain “capital flight,” was in reality a mechanism by which rabid money printers in the government could brazenly steal from the citizens by cranking up the presses and inflating away the value of the peso, in which private savings were helplessly trapped.

With inflation now more or less under control, and Milei’s “zero deficit” budget having brought stability to the broader economy and enticed significant foreign investment, the president was able to unveil a new set of measures designed to gradually phase out government intervention into the foreign exchange markets altogether.

Rather than a fixed peso exchange rate controlled by the central bank, the Argentine peso is now be able to float “freely” – between a band of 1,000–1,400 pesos (64p-87p) per US dollar – leaving the market to determine the true value of the currency (and the strength of the underlying economy upon which it stands).

As you can see from the following graph, the trajectory has been encouraging, with demand for the peso pushing the local currency higher in US dollar terms, such that “la brecha” (the spread) between the official and unofficial rates collapsed from over 24% a few weeks ago, to less than 1% today... (and even, as our friend wrote, into the bizarro world of official-unofficial rate inversion)...

All this is great news for Argentine citizens, who are now free to diversify from their pesos if they so wish... and also for international companies, which can now repatriate capital out of Argentina, something that had heretofore been a major impediment to investment. (Under the previous restrictions, any profits made by international firms could not be moved out of the country... at least, not easily.)

Unlike President Trump’s own Liberation Day, which saw the state’s deepening involvement in the broader economy through a series of trade tariffs, Milei’s version represents another step to the ideal amount of state intervention in the free market: zero.

Watch this space for more. Meanwhile, back on the road...

Egypt, from A to A

After three weeks traversing Egypt, having practically covered the ancient Nile River from bottom (Alexandria) to top (Aswan), we were finally able to do the thing we look forward to most whenever we visit any Islamic country...

Arriving in Athens after an arduous day’s travel on Wednesday, we were immediately suffused with a renewed appreciation for all the hard-fought wonders of decent, modern, civilized society.

Freedom of speech... freedom of the press... freedom of (and from) the state’s mandatory religion...

...and of course, women’s faces... animated... beautiful... human.

Cairo, like much of Egypt, is an unceasing assault on the senses, both physical, emotional, intellectual, moral and common. A frenetic cacophony of haggling, harrying and haranguing... swindling, touting and leering... honking, hissing and harassing... it’s the kind of maniacal megatropolis that makes one long for the relative peace and quietude of a Belmont, Detroit, say, or even a West Baltimore.

Now, your nomadic editor is not averse to holding, and even brandishing, unpopular opinions. Indeed, it is a rare day when we find ourselves numbered among the comfortable majority. And yet, as our rational reader understands, not all cultures are created equally... and not all are equally adept at dealing with even the gentlest of criticisms.

Besides, we are not interested in hurling gratuitous insults, except when it comes to lambasting apostates from our own vocation: western “journalists” who routinely sacrifice facts upon the altar of narrative. A pox on all their houses!

Even so, we found our classically liberal worldview so regionally out of step, so dislocated from the prevailing thought... and the local perspective so anathema to the very ideals of Free Markets, Free Minds and Free People that we espouse in these very Notes, that we would be remiss not to address the unaddressable.

But rather than mire ourselves in all that one culture is not, let us instead give praise for all that another is. Call it an exercise in implied contrast (with readers left to connect the dots for themselves)...

Praise Zeus!

Let us first and foremost praise Zeus for Greece’s most welcoming and tolerant people.

Indeed, the ancient concept of xenia (typically translated as 'guest-friendship' or 'ritualized friendship') is a fundamental aspect of Greek culture. Rooted in generosity, gift-exchange and reciprocity, the idea of welcoming strangers as guests is thought to honor and please Zeus and Athena, prefiguring The Nazarene’s “love thy neighbor” by at least a thousand years. It stands, quite literally, in direct contrast to xenophobia.

The Greeks also venerate intelligence and individual choice, as opposed to stupefied obedience and forced servitude. As such, they have a healthy appreciation and understanding for the risk of “consanguineous relations,” defined by the National Institute of Health as “a union between two individuals who are related as second cousins or closer, with the inbreeding coefficient (F) equal or higher than 0.0156.”

Studies have found that marriage between first cousins results in the offspring’s intelligence being significantly (between 10-16 IQ points) lower than average. To wit, the chance of a child of consanguineous relations having an IQ below 70 (what medical researchers used to call “mental retardation”), is 400% higher than among the progeny of non-consanguineous couples. In some regions of the world, between a quarter and a half of all marriages are consanguineous, a practice that has persisted (and the effects multiplied) for dozens of consecutive generations. And it shows.

Of course, intelligence is not everything – and certainly there are evil geniuses and gentle idiots who walk among us – but it is something... and it is something some cultures, like the Greeks, value highly. That shows, too. We are thankful, therefore, to be back on the shores of Aristotle, of Archimedes and of Pythagoras.

Finally (for now), we are grateful for the Greek practice of isonomia, or what people who live in modern, civilized cultures casually refer to as “equality before the law.”

Here in Greece, men and women are free to dress as they like, to form and express their own opinions, to drive a car, access education and healthcare, marry whom they please, enjoy a peripheral view beyond that of a racehorse, count themselves as something more than chattel slaves, and a raft of other liberties simply not afforded to half the population in certain other cultures.

Used by ancient writers from Herodotus to Thucydides, the term isonomia was also employed by Friedrich Hayek in his momentous work, The Constitution of Liberty, to refer to “the equal application of the laws to all.”

As someone who is honored to travel with not one but two highly spirited, intelligent and independently-minded women (in dear wifey and dear daughter), this author is grateful to have his feet back on Greek soil, among enlightened people, where one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity is cherished, as it should be.

Free markets. Free minds. Free people. We’re getting closer everyday.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Might unpopular ideas – free markets, civil liberties, common sense – be enjoying a resurgence… even in the woke West?

Might thoughtful individuals be ready to ditch the ‘statist quo’ in favor of a more peaceful, voluntary existence?

Might citizens be ready to shrug off the illusion of choice proffered by their would-be political leaders and their puerile porters in the mainstream press?

Such a reality might be closer than you think. Already, millions of people in hundreds of countries have tuned out of state propaganda, meant only to divide, conquer and impoverish people.

Of course, the ideas of freedom, liberty and independence are not going to spread themselves. And that’s where our dear members come in. Thanks to their support, we are able to remain fully independent… which means no advertisements, no bosses and no bias (save our own).

Just free markets, free minds and free people… all the time.

If you’d like to support our work and join the growing community of folks interested in these lately resurgent ideas, please consider becoming a Notes member today. Cheers!