Many people -- including yours truly -- have looked to events of 80 years ago to try and figure out how things might play out in future. But maybe it isn't necessary to go back that far. There have been other economic implosions in more recent times that might offer lessons that are just as illuminating. In fact, one of my regular visitors, Jason, suggested that I check out a blog, Surviving in Argentina, published by an anonymous Argentinean, which offers up some disturbing but absorbing accounts of life in that beleaguered Latin American nation. After reading a post written a few weeks ago, entitled "Despair in Once-Proud Argentina," it made me wonder whether we will see an equally calamitous ending here.
Hi guys, this article is pretty old, dates back to 2002.
English not being my mother language, this is a well written piece that explains many things much better than I can.
If you believe USA is already in a depression and it could get worse, PLEASE read this article.It will explain better to those that are unfamiliar with Argentina, why there are many parallelisms between this country and USA, and in some ways it will portrait a better picture of what I try to explain here many times.
Please do read it. A lot of water has gone under the bridge and we have an entire set of new problems, but these ones during the first months and years, may unfortunately become common in USA one day.
I took the liberty of marking in bold letters the parts that I may have talked about before, or the ones that I found particularly interesting.
Again, PLEASE notice the marked comments about the situation in rural and agricultural areas, and the explanation on what happened to the middle class.These folks left behind their homes in the agricultural provinces and moved to pick trash for a living in the city for a reason, them being stupid not being it.
FerFALDespair in Once-Proud Argentina
After Economic Collapse, Deep Poverty Makes Dignity a Casualty
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 6, 2002; Page A01
ROSARIO, Argentina -- Word spread fast through the vast urban slums ringing Rosario. There was food on the freeway -- and it was still alive.
A cattle truck had overturned near this rusting industrial city, spilling 22 head of prime Angus beef across the wind-swept highway. Some were dead. Most were injured. A few were fine.
A mob moved out from Las Flores, a shantytown of trash heaps and metal shacks boiling over with refugees from the financial collapse of what was once Latin America's wealthiest nation. Within minutes, 600 hungry residents arrived on the scene, wielding machetes and carving knives. Suddenly, according to accounts from some of those present on that March day, a cry went up.
"Kill the cows!" someone yelled. "Take what you can!"
Cattle company workers attempting a salvage operation backed off. And the slaughter began. The scent of blood, death and fresh meat filled the highway. Cows bellowed as they were sloppily diced by groups of men, women and children. Fights broke out for pieces of flesh in bloody tugs of war.
"I looked around at people dragging off cow legs, heads and organs, and I couldn't believe my eyes," said Alberto Banrel, 43, who worked on construction jobs until last January, when the bottom fell out of the economy after Argentina suffered the world's largest debt default ever and a massive currency devaluation.
"And yet there I was, with my own bloody knife and piece of meat," Banrel said. "I felt like we had become a pack of wild animals . . . like piranhas on the Discovery Channel. Our situation has turned us into this."
The desolation of that day, neighbor vs. neighbor over hunks of meat, suggested how profoundly the collapse has altered Argentina. Traditionally proud, Argentines have begun to despair. Talk today is of vanished dignity, of a nation diminished in ways not previously imaginable.
Argentines have a legacy of chaos and division. In search of their "workers' paradise," Juan and Eva Peron declared war on the rich. During the "dirty war" of the 1970s, military rulers arrested tens of thousands of people, 15,000 of whom never resurfaced. And when then-President Carlos Menem touted New Capitalism in the 1990s, the rich got richer -- many illegally -- while the poor got poorer.
Yet some things here never really changed. Until last year, Argentines were part of the richest, best-educated and most cultured nation in Latin America. Luciano Pavarotti still performed at the Teatro Colon. Buenos Aires cafe society thrived, with intellectuals debating passages from Jorge Luis Borges over croissants and espresso. The poor here lived with more dignity than their equals anywhere else in the region. Argentina was, as the Argentines liked to say, very civilized.
Not anymore.
Argentines have watched, horrified, as the meltdown dissolved more than their pocketbooks. Even the rich have been affected in their own way. The tragedy has struck hardest, however, among the middle class, the urban poor and the dirt farmers. Their parts of this once-proud society appear to have collapsed -- a cave-in so complete as to leave Argentines inhabiting a barely recognizable landscape.
With government statistics showing 11,200 people a day falling into poverty -- earning less than $3 daily -- Buenos Aires, a city once compared to Paris, has become the dominion of scavengers and thieves at night. Newly impoverished homeless people emerge from abandoned buildings and rail cars, rummaging through trash in declining middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. People from the disappearing middle class, such as Vicente Pitasi, 60 and jobless, have turned to pawn shops to sell their wedding rings.
"I have seen a lot happen in Argentina in my day, but I never lost hope until now," Pitasi said. "There is nothing left here, not even our pride."
Wages Fall, Prices Rise
Late last month, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of Eva Peron's death, thieves swiped the head of a new statue of her. Nothing, really, is sacred here anymore. Ads by concerned citizens appear on television, asking Argentines to look inward at a culture of tax evasion, incivility and corruption. But nobody seems to be listening.
Food manufacturers and grocery stores are raising prices even as earning power has taken a historic tumble. A large factor in both the price rises and the slump in real wages is a 70 percent devaluation of the peso over the last six months. But the price of flour has soared 166 percent, canned tomatoes 118 percent -- even though both are local products that have had little real increases in production costs.
Severe hunger and malnutrition have emerged in the rural interior -- something almost never seen in a country famous for great slabs of beef and undulating fields of wheat. In search of someone to blame, Argentines have attacked the homes of local politicians and foreign banks. Many of the banks have installed steel walls and armed guards around branch offices, and replaced glass windows decorated with ads portraying happy clients from another era.
Economists and politicians differ on the causes of the brutal crisis. Some experts blame globalization and faulty policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund. But just as many blame the Argentine government for runaway spending and systematic corruption. The one thing everyone agrees on, however, is that there is no easy fix.
Statistically, it is easy to see why. Before 1999, when this country of 36 million inhabitants slipped into recession, Argentina's per capita income was $8,909 -- double Mexico's and three times that of Poland. Today, per capita income has sunk to $2,500, roughly on a par with Jamaica and Belarus.
The economy is projected to shrink by 15 percent this year, putting the decline at 21 percent since 1999. In the Great Depression years of 1930-33, the Argentine economy shrank by 14 percent.
What had been a snowball of poverty and unemployment has turned into an avalanche since January's default and devaluation. A record number of Argentines, more than half, live below the official poverty line. More than one in five no longer have jobs.
"We've had our highs and lows, but in statistical and human terms, this nation has never faced anything like this," said Artemio Lopez, an economist with Equis Research. "Our economic problems of the past pale to what we're going through now. It's like the nation is dissolving."
The Suffering Middle Class
Every Argentine, no matter the social class, has a crisis story. Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, 80, one of the country's richest women, was forced to offer up paintings by Gauguin, Degas, Miro and Matisse at a Sotheby's auction in May. For many of Argentina's well-to-do, the sale was the ultimate humbler, a symbol of decline in international stature.
Those suffering most, however, are the ones who had less to begin with.
On the morning of her 59th birthday, Norma Gonzalez woke up in her middle-class Buenos Aires home, kissed her husband on the cheek and caught a bus to the bank. There, before a stunned teller, the portly redhead, known by her family and friends mostly for her fiery temper and homemade meat pies, doused herself with rubbing alcohol, lit a match and set herself ablaze.
That was in April. Today, Rodolfo Gonzalez, 61, her husband, keeps a daily vigil at the burn center where his wife is still receiving skin grafts on the 40 percent of her body that sustained third-degree burns. She had no previous record of mental illness, according to her family and doctors, and has spoken only once about that morning.
"She just looked up at me from her hospital bed and said, 'I felt so helpless, I just couldn't take it anymore,' " Gonzalez said. "I can't understand what she did. It just wasn't Norma. But I suppose I can understand what drove her to it. It's this country. We're all going crazy."
Argentina long had the largest middle class, proportionally, in Latin America, and one of the continent's most equitable distributions of wealth. Much of that changed over the last decade as millions of middle managers, salaried factory workers and state employees lost their jobs during the sell-off of state-run industries and the collapse of local companies flooded by cheap imports.
Initially, Rodolfo Gonzalez was one of the lucky ones. An engineer for the state power company, he survived the early rounds of layoffs in the early 1990s when the company was sold to a Spanish utility giant. His luck changed when the company forced him out in a round of early retirements in 2000.
He was 59 and had worked for the same company for 38 years. Yet he landed a part-time job, and with his severance pay safely in the bank, he and his wife thought they could bridge the gap until Gonzalez became eligible for social security in 2004.
Then came "El Corralito."
Literally translated, that means "the little corral." But there is nothing little about it. On Dec. 1, Domingo Cavallo, then the economy minister, froze bank accounts in an attempt to stem a flood of panicked depositors pulling out cash.
Most banks here are subsidiaries of major U.S. and European financial giants that arrived with promises of providing stability and safety to the local banking system. But many Argentines who did not get their money out in time -- more than 7 million, mostly middle-class depositors, did not -- faced a bitter reality: Their life savings in those institutions, despite names such as Citibank and BankBoston, were practically wiped out.
Virtually all had kept their savings in U.S. dollar-denominated accounts. But when the government devalued the peso, it gave troubled banks the right to convert those dollar deposits into pesos. So the Gonzalez family's $42,000 nest egg, now converted into pesos, is worth less than $11,600.
As the family had trouble covering basic costs, Norma Gonzalez would go to the bank almost every week to argue with tellers and demand to see a manager, who would never appear. As prices rose and the couple could not draw on their savings, their lifestyle suffered. First went shows in the Buenos Aires theater district and dinners on Saturday night with friends. Then, in March, they cut cable TV.
Around the same time, the Gonzalezes' daughter, Paula, 30, lost her convenience store. Separated and with two children, she turned to her parents for support.
The Gonzalezes had been planning for 18 months to take Norma's dream vacation, to Chicago to visit a childhood friend. After the trip was shelved as too expensive, she seemed to break.
"I can't explain it, and maybe I never will be able to," Rodolfo Gonzalez said. He added: "But maybe you can start to figure out why. You have to wonder: Is all this really happening? Are our politicians so corrupt? Are we now really so poor? Have the banks really stolen our money? And the answers are yes, yes, yes and yes."
Scavenging Urban Trash
"There is not enough trash to go around for everyone," said Banrel, one of the participants in the cattle massacre. Rail-thin, he normally passes his days combing the garbage-strewn roads around the Las Flores slums in Rosario, a city of 1.3 million residents 200 miles northwest of Buenos Aires and long known as "the Chicago of Argentina."
If Banrel finds enough discarded plastic bottles and aluminum cans -- about 300 -- he can make about $3 a day. But the pickings are slim because competition is fierce. The misery villages, as shantytowns such as Las Flores are called, are becoming overcrowded with the arrival of people fleeing desperate rural areas where starvation has set in. About 150 new families arrive each month, according to Roman Catholic Church authorities.
With more people in the slums, there are fewer plastic bottles to go around. Banrel said he was getting desperate that day when he joined the mob on the highway.
His family of three -- his wife is pregnant with their second child -- had been surviving on a bowl of watery soup and a piece of bread each day. He earned at least $40 to $60 a week last year working construction. With that gone, and with food getting more expensive, he said, "You can't miss an opportunity, not around here."
"Am I proud of what we did?" he added. "No, of course not. Would I do it again? Yes, of course. You start to live by different rules."
Reality of Rural Hunger
For some rural families, the crisis has gone further. It has generated something rarely seen in Argentina: hunger. In the province of Tucuman, an agricultural zone of 1.3 million people, health workers say cases of malnutrition have risen 20 percent to 30 percent over the previous year.
"I wish they would cry," whispered Beatriz Orresta, 20, looking at her two young sons in a depressed Tucuman sugar cane town in the shadow of the Andes. "I would feel much better if they cried."
Jonatan, 2, resting on the dirt floor behind the family's wooden shack, and Santiago, the 7-month-old she cradled in her arms, lay listlessly.
"They don't act it, but they're hungry. I know they are," she said.
Orresta can tell. Jonatan is lethargic. His lustrous brown hair has turned a sickly carrot color. Clumps of it sometimes fall out at night as Orresta strokes him to sleep. Santiago hardly seems to mind that Orresta, weak and malnourished herself, stopped lactating months ago. The infant, sucking on a bottle of boiled herbal tea, stares blankly with sunken eyes.
Six months ago, the boys were the loudest complainers when their regular meals stopped. Orresta's husband, Hector Ariel, 21, had his $100 monthly salary as a sugar cane cutter slashed almost in half when candy companies and other sugar manufacturers in the rural enclave of Rio Chico, 700 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, were stung by dried-up credit and a massive drop in national consumption.
Ariel now earns just over $1.50 a day, not enough for the family to survive. The peso's plunge has generated inflation of more than 33 percent during the first seven months of the year, more than double the government's projection for the entire year.
Goods not in high demand, such as new clothing, have not gone up significantly in price, but staples that families need for daily subsistence have doubled or tripled. The last time inflation hit Argentina -- in the late 1980s, when it rose to a high of 5,000 percent -- the unemployment rate was half the current 21.5 percent and most salaries were indexed to inflation. Today, there are no such safety nets.
"I could buy rice for 30 cents a kilo last year," Orresta said. "It's more than one peso 50 now."
"At least we will eat tonight, that's the important thing," she said, stirring an improvised soup.
The concoction, water mixed with the dried bones of a long-dead cow her husband found in an abandoned field, had been simmering for two days. The couple had not eaten in that time. It had been 24 hours since the children ate.
Orresta, like most mothers in her village, started trimming costs by returning to cloth diapers for her two young boys when the price of disposable ones doubled with inflation. But then she could no longer afford the soap to wash them, and resorted to reusing the same detergent four or five times. The children began to get leg rashes.
By late January, the family could no longer afford daily meals. A month later, Jonatan's hair began turning reddish and, later, falling out. Although he has just turned 2, Jonatan still cannot walk and has trouble focusing his eyes.
Orresta stopped lactating in April. But the price of powdered milk had almost tripled by then, from three pesos for an 800-gram box to more than eight pesos. At those prices, the family can afford 11 days of milk a month. The rest of the time, Santiago drinks boiled maté, a tea that also serves as an appetite suppressant.
"You know, we're not used to this, not having enough food," said Orresta, with a hint of embarrassment in her voice.
She paused, and began to weep.
"You can't know what it's like to see your children hungry and feel helpless to stop it," she said. "The food is there, in the grocery store, but you just can't afford to buy it anymore. My husband keeps working, but he keeps bringing home less and less. We never had much, but we always had food, no matter how bad things got. But these are not normal times."
If the US goes down , so does the rest of the world, at least for the foreseeable future.
There is no fundamental reason why the world economy should continue to grow. It depends on policies that are implemented by those in leadership positions.
We've had hundreds of complex societies collapse in recorded history, including one in 1990 or so.
Posted by: purple | December 17, 2008 at 07:53 PM
This is really stupid. Do you crave the end of society?
OK you called the crash - so did I. Get over it, now offer some help as to help we get out of it instead of wallowing in this kind of dreck.
Posted by: Steamed | December 17, 2008 at 11:34 PM
This is tabloid quality,not intellectually part of the solution.
Posted by: roger | December 18, 2008 at 12:01 AM
RE: "not intellectually part of the solution"
since those who browse the web usually have $$$$ and time to waste, it's hard to understand those without such luxury.
Posted by: barney | December 18, 2008 at 12:13 AM
This is good to read. It reminds people like myself that I should share with people in need (or who will be in need).
To Roger, you know a great way to increase your influence in the world is by gaining the loyalty of people you help..
Posted by: Kenny | December 18, 2008 at 01:10 AM
Thanks for posting this. For many years, I had been aware that Argentina had been through a difficult economic crisis.
The WaPo article is one of the more concrete, descriptive pieces I have read on it.
I read a few "doomer" sites, and the blog authors often receive comments about how the author is always discussing doomsday and never offering solutions.
It's a pathetic, adolescent line of thought.
I don't think anyone alive has answers to what we are going through and what we may be about to go through. The best we can do is observe the present and learn from the past.
The sooner people begin to exercise their imaginations and powers of discernment, the sooner we can all come up with answers either collectively or individually.
Thank you for all the work you do.
Rusty
Posted by: Rusty | December 18, 2008 at 01:11 AM
Dear blogger,
This is a good article for you to blog. This is about recent Fed cut the key interest rate to 0.25%
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20081217/fed-cuts-key-interest-rate-to-near-zero.htm
Posted by: Philip Chua | December 18, 2008 at 04:15 AM
LEARNED HELPLESSNESS IS LETHAL.
so, if ya cant get one of those job thingys from the rich ppl ya starve.
Wow , does anybody ever consider maybe growing your own stuff , i.e food, cotton , hemp , building materials etc .
Rural poverty boggles my mind , couldnt happen without tyranny I think , and like jefferson said ' sometimes liberty requires the blood of tyrants ' or somethin like that .
Posted by: scott | December 18, 2008 at 07:27 AM
Re: "since those who browse the web usually have $$$$ and time to waste, it's hard to understand those without such luxury."
Fully agree :-)
Posted by: Forex Grid | December 18, 2008 at 10:03 AM
One of the fall outs of the Argentinian economic collapse earlier this decade was the large scale Jewish emigration from the country. You'll know things are really bad in the US when formerly rich American Jews start moving to Israel in large numbers.
Posted by: Rocky | December 18, 2008 at 10:29 AM
Gosh Scott - you're feeling smug and superior to starving people. In the Christmas season. That's a whole new pit of ugly you've discovered there.
Rocky - Why the hell would we go to Israel? France, baby.
Posted by: Gavel Down | December 18, 2008 at 10:57 AM
I just finished reading the future of the US. There is now no way to avoid this as the utter Wall Street corruption is complete. History dictates that a fiat currency always fails. Watch it happen to the USD in 2009.
Posted by: Joe M. | December 18, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Thanks for the comment barney. Guess I did not make myself
clear,,,live & learn... my intent was to point out that the
article created fear and did not offer any solution.
for me there can be no peace in the world unless there
is ECONOMIC JUSTICE, IE: a fair & equitable distribution
of the wealth, at my age I have seen to many wars & killing
due tremendous exploitation and social injustice.
Posted by: roger | December 18, 2008 at 12:01 PM
RE: Gosh Scott - you're feeling smug and superior to starving people. In the Christmas season. That's a whole new pit of ugly you've discovered there. Posted by: Gavel Down
I dont think its smug to inform ppl suffering from deficiencies that there are options other than waiting for their masters to help them.
whats really ugly is for someone like yourself to continue to encourage that they continue to think in ways that will continue their deficiencies , duh.
Posted by: scott | December 18, 2008 at 12:16 PM
In point of fact, you're saying that you could do "starving, poor, and homeless" better than they can, and without knowing anything about where they live or what their situation is, that they can and should grow their own food and magically turn into self-sustaining farmers, as if it's easy.
I really, really hope you get a chance to try it for yourself one of these days, son.
Also, it's bad enough that Americans don't bother to learn more than one language, but for god's sake at least bother to learn ONE to a reasonable degree of competence.
Posted by: Gavel Down | December 18, 2008 at 02:02 PM
Gavel Down:
Hear, hear. People who haven't been there, as I assume Scott hasn't, shouldn't judge. It's sickening.
Maybe they can't find land, did you think of that, dishrag? Republicans think good ole' self-sufficiency will cure any ill. Those Jews in concentration camps - all they needed was to grow their own food - lazy bums.
Posted by: misterkel | December 18, 2008 at 04:32 PM
This was a great article. So now we have a new litmus test to describe the US descent.
1. Stage 1. People default on debts
2. Stage 2. People lose their homes
3. Stage 3. People rob and steal.
4. Stage 4. People butcher cattle live in the middle of the streets.
5. Stage 5. (not to be outdone). People butcher people in the streets. Cannibalism.
6. Stage 6. ????????!
Posted by: Loda | December 18, 2008 at 04:53 PM
well, i certainly dont feel very superior to hungry or starving ppl . I do feel superior to you .
In fact, the reason that I dont, and the reason that most of the worlds population shouldnt either is exactly because the difference between being a reasonably well-fed wage-slave and being a hungry person is just usually the difference in what the investor class has wished upon you , and of course for the hungry folks who have been worn down physically to the point of pysical weakness, they certainly arent likely to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and they certainly wont help get much help from persons like we see here who are apologists for the
system that made the ppl into paupers .
But maybe those of us who are not yet so wearied by the environment created by the investment class should see the starving ppl as a warning of things to come for ourselves if we dont change that environment and take control of it .
RE;Maybe they can't find land, did you think of that, dishrag?
Better take some then huh? Though I'm sure such pussified apologists as we see here would object to that too, we cant be getting our hands dirty , now can we ?
Posted by: scott | December 18, 2008 at 05:05 PM
Roger and Steamed:
I have an idea:
1. You continue to cheerlead.
2. I'll prepare.
Much of what he says is common sense to country folk like me. Nobody wishes for this, but if you'd bothered to read the article you would have your solutions. It could not be more clear. I think the real problem is that your sensibilities were offended by the prospect of anarchy. Certainly the prospect of anarchy is there. It is not without precedent.
So from my perspective, the bottom line is whether to put your family at risk to make a point. I know plenty of people who have no problem with that if it shows them to be progressive, tolerant, whatever is in vogue at the moment. Personally, I'm all about protecting my loved ones.
I hope I never have to.
If I do, I'll be ready.
Posted by: Fat Man | December 18, 2008 at 06:14 PM
I was in Buenos Aires in 2001 on a business trip. Prior to landing, I had no clue what was going on economically in Argentina.
The city looked every bit as civilized and built up as Paris-- but there wasn't nearly as much traffic on the roads.
On a tour bus trip of the city, the guide said unemployment had reached 70%. When there was a brief stop, I asked her-- because of her accent-- whether she'd said 17%. No, 70% she replied very dryly and without expression.
When the bus passed a park full of people selling things, I asked the driver to stop and immediately got off. I went and spent every cent I had in my pockets-- most of my money went to an extremely old woman who had horrible felt-like slippers she'd made. The park was full of all ages and types selling everything imaginable. There were few shoppers.
Later in the trip, in another part of the country, my curiosity got the better of me and I asked about all the "ruins in progress"-- skeletons of commercial buildings and houses that had obviously ceased construction years and years ago. They were everywhere. The driver said that in a single day, the government had done something to the currency that completely changed its value-- on that day all construction everywhere stopped. Everything instantly became worthless. I'm not economically trained, so it made no sense to me.
When it came time to fly back to Buenos Aires a week later-- again, with no air of surprise and not much explanation-- we found our airline had ceased to exist. No one made a big deal of it. Apparently, there were only two airlines left in Argentina and the government owned both of them (vague recollection). Without much fanfare, one of the remaining airlines took our tickets and put us on a plane. It felt like "business as usual."
I appreciate articles like this one, because SEEING the instant devastation of a "civilized" country demonstrates how possible it is for others. I think most Americans picture "third world" and believe it can't happen here.
The right combination of bad decisions can make it happen ANYWHERE.
Posted by: Annie | December 19, 2008 at 12:58 PM
Jesus Christ.
If I read one more whiny crybaby "Offer us solutions!!!" post, I'll scream. OK, I'm screaming NOW.
WTF is wrong with you lot?
You've been given the very rare privilege here of seeing the breakdown of an advanced society into absolute horror. Some of you are thinking, unsaid, "Oh, it's just those effing spicks, that's how they are!" The other lot are thinking, "Hey, my gun will be my passport!"
Both of you are unfit for survival with what's coming up.
Your "solution" -- such as it will be -- is YOU. What the hell do you think made this country, a pack of crybabies telling the proto-revolutionaries, "Oh, give us a solution EXCEPT overthrowing Old George"?!
Your money is shit.
Your gold is shit.
Your gun is shit.
Start there and YOU can begin to CREATE some solutions.
FA, thanks much for this post. I'm linking to it.
Posted by: Mike Cane | December 19, 2008 at 05:32 PM
Obviously it does not have to be this way in the US, but it can become so if the government continues to morph its program from stabilizing the financial system to trying to repeal the business cycle.
The more committed the Feds are to renewed growth at any cost, and to reflating house prices by promoting the same policies that caused the whole mess in the first place, the more likely the dollar will collapse. If the dollar goes, don't cry for me Argentina.
Posted by: tokyo joe | December 25, 2008 at 06:39 PM
I am an American who is married to someone from AR and was living there in 2002. I have been returning every year since. I have been to other Latin American countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and El Salvador. And have many friends from other LAT AM countries. To me I am amazed at Argentines resolve crisis or no crisis. They continue forward doing their own thing. And you know what I really didn't see a country falling apart, people gone mad. People said to me we are used to this, this is how it always is. A shame yes, but they say now, that things are getting better little by little.
I lived in NYC all my life say what you want, but New Yorkers are the same. I lived through the 70's and 80's and there is no going back to that. People in NY have changed and are not "animals" anymore.
Posted by: JohnnyLabs | December 26, 2008 at 05:22 PM