What a Fnancial Collapse Looks Like

[EmeraldCityGrl]

I watched this film earlier. It documents the financial collapse in Argentina. Amazingly, many of the corporate
institutions involved like Citibank are responsible. Full length film but well worth the watch.

Argentina

Out of control foreign debt..enriched bankers and big business...made it easy to loot the country...and turned a rich country into a poor, one wiping out its middle class in the process.

Sound familiar?


http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/445.html

[Revlon10]

1. WOW

Thanks for the link, a must see

[HamdenRice]

2. But there is one big difference

I haven't seen the film but back in the early 90s, I knew several people who were involved in Latin American debt restructuring, and I followed it closely.

The problem that those countries faced was that they borrowed in dollars, but their currency was some other currency, like a peso. As long as the exchange rate was stable, then they could at least try to pay back their debts by converting the peso into dollars to send overseas.

But if the international currency markets lost confidence in their currency and ability to pay, the peso would decline against the dollar. If the peso fell by 50%, their debt in dollars basically doubled.

What is so different about the US having a financial crisis is that the county having the debt crisis is also the country of the reserve currency, the dollar. That's why we are exporting our crisis to every country in the world. The only thing comparable would be the British currency crises of the early and mid 1900s, when the pound was one of the world's reserve currencies.

[lostnfound]

3. The American middle class will be eaten, too.

That is quite possibly the intention, in fact.

[AdHocSolver]

4. Bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks.

His response (I am paraphrasing) was, "Because they keep a lot of money there."

The poor people in America don't have a lot of money to steal. The Latin American countries are rebelling against American corporate thievery. The American middle class is all they have left to plunder. Since the corporations control the legislative and judicial branches of our government, stealing from the middle class is as easy as taking candy from a baby.

More bailouts, anyone?

[girl gone mad]

5. Reserve currency status won't save us long term.

With too many dollars in circulation, too much debt and no buyers, the dollar would become devalued. It doesn't matter if the dollar is spread out around the globe and our debt is owed in dollars. Our assets are deflating. Foreign countries could use their dollar reserves to buy up our assets before hyperinflation takes hold, then move to a new reserve.

[Hannah Bell]

7. I read that there were systematic attacks on their currencies, though.

[machI]

6. Most people have no idea. n/t