United States of... Garbage?

Plus, Javier Milei's chainsaw cuts, America's Gaffer in Chief and McDonald takes out the trash...

(Donald Trump holds a press conference from the cabin of Garbage Force One, in “honor of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”)

Just finish cleanin’ up your room
Let's see that dust fly with that broom
Get all that garbage out of sight
Or you don't go out Friday night
Yakety yak (don't talk back)

~ Yakety Yak by The Coasters (1956)

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

The seasons have turned down in the “Paris of the South.” Spring is in the air... the city’s magnificent Jacarandas are coming into bloom... and the putrefied administrative state is daily revealing itself for what it is: a vestigial organ of the body politic in dire need of a bureaucrat-ectomy. 

(Jacarandas along Avenida Alcorta, out front of the Facultad de Derecho at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Source: Dear wife)

Happily, the Man with the Motosierra, President Javier Milei, is hard on the job, hacking away rotten limbs and hollow branches. A look at the numbers from October suggest he’s on the right path...

• Argentina’s S&P Merval Index was up 8.9%

• Argentine bonds rallied 7.2%

• And the country’s “risk index” (a measure closely watched by foreign investors looking to deploy capital here) collapsed by a whopping 23.7%. (The lower, the better.)

Meanwhile, the BCRA (Argentina’s Central Bank) continued to replenish its dollar reserves, adding another $1.5 billion – the single largest monthly purchase in 20 years. (Sr. Milei stands by his plans to dollarize the economy... but not before the country’s finances are returned to some level of normalcy.)

And here’s a different aspect of the macro situation, this one showing economic activity (the blue line) next to core inflation (orange bar graph). As you can see, following the massive fiscal adjustment necessary to stave off imminent hyperinflation, the Argentine economy has roared back to life. All the while, core inflation has collapsed, from 54% per month... to just 2%. 

Hmm... balanced budgets... limited government... fiscal responsibility... free markets, free minds and free people... 

Where have we heard this before?

Mr. McGarbage

Ah, but let us leave well enough alone here on the Pampas for now. Today, we turn our attention toward the final lap in the 2024 US Election Olympics, where nothing is quite as it seems.

This is an election cycle like no other, where the loudest Kennedy proclaims for the Republican candidate... and the Democrats have welcomed the Cheney’s, whom they once described as the devil incarnate, into their feckless fold. Truly, we are through the looking glass. 

Who could have guessed, for instance, that Donald Trump’s #1 campaigner would turn out to be Joe Biden himself? And here we thought the Big Guy had it in for The Donald, what with all the “fascist-this” and “threat-to-democracy-that” rhetoric. 

Turns out it was all a ruse. Biden’s real enemy, as we are beginning to understand, is none other than Kamala Harris.

Evidently not content with merely torpedoing his own bid for reelection, the 46th president of the United States now appears to be sowing the seeds of discontent among the very voters his Veep is attempting to win over with her charmless cackle and unlettered, cosmic word burgers. 

Here he is, “doing a Biden” and wandering off-script in a recent television interview (we’ve done our best to translate it into English)...

“Well, let me tell you something. I don’t...I, I... I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know... the Puerto Rico, where I’m from...  In my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there are [Donald Trump’s] supporters.” 

With visions of Hillary’s “deplorables” moment dancing in his head, Mr. Trump must have thought all his Christmases had come at once. The Donald should send his former adversary a card and a nice box of chocolates. It was Kamala in the crosshairs all along. 

In that one rambling diatribe, not only did we learn what the Big Guy thinks of approximately half the country’s voters... we also discovered that San Juan is located somewhere inside the Diamond State. Frankly, we’re surprised the clip is still up on Youtube. You’d think the Deep State’s Ministry of Misinformation would have flagged it as “Russian interference” by now and dutifully buried it in the filing cabinet along with Epstein’s client list and Gain of Fauci’s batty covid origin emails.  

Gaffer in Chief

To be fair, the Commander in Chief is not exactly renowned for his Ciceronian oratory prowess. This was, after all, the same tomb fugitive who gifted the world a slew of blunders, bloopers and indelicate indiscretions during his feeble tenure... like when he called President Zelensky President Putin... or the Congressional Hispanic Caucus the “Black Caucus”... or his own vice president, Kamala Harris, “Vice President Trump”... or when he informed podcaster Mos Def (who is most definitely black) that “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t black”...

Indeed, were it not for George W. Bush and his tireless bid to “make the pie higher,” we’d have to formally recognize Joseph R. Biden as the nation’s finest Gaffer in Chief. And this latest doozie could hardly have been better timed... for Mr. Trump. 

Ever the showman, the former and aspiring president swooped on the opportunity like a seagull onto a lame shrimp. Before Trump Force One had landed at his very next event, a rally in Green Bay, in the all-important swing state of Wisconsin, a shiny new garbage truck, bedecked with all the Trump insignia, was waiting for him... ready to troll. 

A pithy press conference from the truck’s cabin... a little levity at a time when mirth is in short supply... and a chorus of howling tirades from the jilted “campaign of joy”... and in one hot DC minute, nobody could remember who Tony Hinchcliffe even was.

From there, the Internet did the rest for him…

Life Lessons

And to think, if the betting markets are right and Mr. Trump prevails in next week’s election, he will do so in no small part because he did a shift at McDonald’s and remembered to take out the trash. Life lessons, dear reader. Life lessons. 

Of course, these are all publicity stunts, slick gimmicks to captivate the voters’ fleeting attention in a seemingly never-ending election olympics. But politics has always been more about antics and narratives than actual substance. It was the late, great Frank Zappa who famously observed: “Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.”

In the end, democracy is the same as it ever was: a pair of featherless bipeds standing before a crowd, promising them things they don’t need with money they don’t have. We may not like it... we may even wish it to be otherwise... but to do so is to wish that the sun rose in the west and set in the east, that the thunder was faster than the lightning, that seagulls left alone the flailing shrimp. It’s just not the way things work, not in the heavens, nor here on earth.

The Romans called it “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses) for a reason. And now, as always, the show must go on!

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.

How do we know?

Well, we don’t… but we have reason to be cautiously optimistic. Even these humble Notes now reach dear readers in all 50 states across the US… and in 135 countries around the world. Not bad, given that we only just began the project this year.

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.

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 ~ JB