The Ol’ Rug Pull

It’s always been insiders vs. the outsiders...

(From Substack image generator)

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.”

~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

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

What a jolly time to be alive, dear reader!

Birds chirping in the trees... chainsaws buzzing up and down the halls of Congress... and DOGE biting Big Bureaucracy square in the derriere...

From one End of the Americas to the other, on both sides of the Atlantic, moochers and grifters in the political caste are daily waking to find their gravy trains fast running out of track.

But where to begin? Like a mosquito at a nudist camp, we are confronted with a fleshy smorgasbord of choice.

Let’s start with the happenings down here, in the Paris of the South...

Crash Landings

It’s been a week since the whole $LIBRA furor (in which President Javier Milei was accused of being involved in a “rug pull” crypto scam) first made waves on the Interwebs.

The meme coin project that Milei had shared on social media was launched into the cryptosphere last Friday, where it soon soared to lofty heights... before making the kind of landing that would put an “unmanned” DEIlta flight to shame.

True to form, Milei’s political adversaries arrived promptly on the scene... with jerrycans full of kerosene. From Tuesday’s Note:

Opposition leaders, recognizing a good corruption story when they see one, immediately began calling for impeachment. Milei himself, meanwhile, demanded a full and transparent inquiry into the story to determine whether anyone in his government – including himself – broke any laws.

The telenovela is still unfolding (watch this space for any relevant updates...), but so far, Argentine voters appear to be responding with a giant helping of “meh.”

A poll conducted by local firm Giacobbe found that, when asked about what should happen to the people who invested in $LIBRA and lost money, 21 percent of respondents said they had no opinion on the matter, while 71 percent said those who assumed the risk had no right to complain (FAFO, as the kids say). Only 7.8 percent reckoned the state should make them whole.

The same consultancy had Milei’s popularity unchanged from February 2024 to February 2025... while at least one news channel saw his popularity actually increase after the whole crypto-brouhaha. (Graph shows “positive image for Milei” bother before and after “LIBRA-gate.”)

Fiat Inferno

Hmm... it is almost as if people care more about actual inflation – which hit its lowest level since 2020 last month, down from an eye-watering monthly rate of 25.5% last January... to just 2.2% a year later – than the volatile and vaguely esoteric world of meme coins.

None of which is to say that proper investigations should not be conducted and appropriate measures taken if, indeed, any wrongdoing is discovered... but let us not lose sight of the ocean for the ripples.

After all, the ol’ rug pull is nothing new... as the political class here well knows. When it comes to insiders fleecing outsiders, by getting their grubby mitts on freshly created (ex nihilo) money before squeezing the value from it and dumping the remains on the population at large, the crypto casino is chump change compared to the giant Ponzi Scheme run by Central Banks of the world... including, notably, right here in Argentina.

Take a look at the following chart, for example...

This is not some pump ‘n’ dump “sh!tcoin,” mind you, in which speculators voluntarily place their bets, caveat emptor. This is the national currency of a sovereign nation state, in which citizens were forced to “save,” “invest” and surrender their taxes unto Caesar. As you can see, the Argentine peso is down over 99 percent vs the US dollar since mid-2007, the very year Cristina Fernández de Kirchner pried the presidency from her husband, Nestor’s, cold dead hands.

In other words, Argentines have enough to worry about in the real world... never mind the virtual one.

USD Vortex

Speaking of epic “rug pulls,” where establishment elites make out like bandits and leave an unknowing public holding the bag, the “waste, corruption and abuse” circling the planet’s dirtiest drain – Washington DC – continues daily to astound citizens on both sides of the aisle.

It’s impossible to keep track of the hundreds of billions – even trillions – of dollars squandered on boneheaded boondoggles abroad and age-defying incompetence at home, but a few examples will suffice to make the point. From the Department of Governmental Efficiency:

US taxpayer dollars were going to be spent on the following items, all which have been cancelled:

- $10M for "Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision"
- $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop "a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills"
- $2.3M for "strengthening independent voices in Cambodia"
- $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
- $40M for "gender equality and women empowerment hub"
- $14M for "improving public procurement" in Serbia
- $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for "inclusive and participatory political process" in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
- $29M to "strengthening political landscape in Bangladesh"
- $20M for "fiscal federalism" in Nepal
- $19M for "biodiversity conversation" in Nepal
- $1.5M for "voter confidence" in Liberia
- $14M for "social cohesion" in Mali
- $2.5M for "inclusive democracies in Southern Africa"
- $47M for "improving learning outcomes in Asia"
- $2M to develop "sustainable recycling models" to "increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt"

Meanwhile, moving into the “B for Billions” column...

According to an Inspector General audit, the Social Security Administration made ~$72 billion in improper payments over an eight-year period, including to a few Rasputinian recipients who were apparently old enough to have witnessed the founding of the republic. (Oh the stories they could tell!)

And yet, impressive (and tragi-comic) as all that is, it’s still nothing on the largest USD vortex of them all: The Pentagon.

One week ago, President Trump put the fear of peace into the hearts of the nation’s largest arms manufacturers when he suggested defense spending could be cut “by up to half.”

“We’re going to spend a lot less money,” Trump said at a news conference addressing the potential outcome of talks with Russia and China. “One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China and President Putin of Russia. I want to say let’s cut our military budget in half.”

And now here’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, ordering the Pentagon to find around $50 billion in cuts, which is around 8% of the defense budget of over $800 billion.

Will the chainsaw actually make its way to the Pentagon? We’ll take a look at America’s five-sided, one-way cash hole next week.

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

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. That independent journalism remains under attack around the world is as indisputable as it is lamentable. The sworn enemies of a free and open press – including state governments and, often times, establishment media itself – are powerful and well-funded.

Notes From the End of the World, on the other hand, is an independent, 100% reader-supported publication. As such, we are ever grateful to our small (but rapidly growing!) community of deep readers, critical thinkers and committed skeptics. In times like these, your support is especially appreciated.

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