Purchasing Power In Argentina Slumps To The Lowest Level Since 2001

ECONOMY | Yesterday 00:06 Purchasing power loss in Argentina slumps to levels not seen since 2001 crisis Soaring utility bills and basic shopping-basket prices have eroded the capacity of families to buy everyday goods. Minimum wage has fallen 28% in terms of purchasing power over last 12 months, UBA report finds. Share this News A woman looks at the window of a clothing store that reads 'Clearance Last Days' in Buenos Aires on May 14, 2024, on the day of the announcement of April's inflation index. A woman looks at the window of a clothing store that reads 'Clearance Last Days' in Buenos Aires on May 14, 2024, on the day of the announcement of April's inflation index. | JUAN MABROMATA / AFP The purchasing power of families in Argentina has fallen this year to record levels not seen since 2001 economic crisis. Argentina’s minimum wage lost 1.3 percent in October, accumulating a loss of 28 percent over the 12 months between last November and this, according to a report prepared by the Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economía Política at the University of Buenos Aires’ Economics Faculty. It is the steepest annual decline in incomes since the 2001 crisis, said the report. The abrupt fall is explained mostly by increased inflation – currently at an annual 193 percent – with a post-devaluation peak of 25.5 percent last December when President Javier Milei took office. Soaring utility bills also explain the fall in purchasing power. Milei evaluates Argentina’s future in Mercosur Read more... Milei evaluates Argentina’s future in Mercosur The institute’s report – "Panorama of formal wage-earning employment and its remuneration" – shows that wages started to plunge last December when they contracted 15 percent due to accelerating inflation, nosediving yet further in January with a fall of 17 percent. This trend was temporarily interrupted in the following months, a period during which nominal wages accompanied inflation so that additional reductions were not observed. Last June there was a new fall (minus 4.4 percent), followed by a certain recovery in July (plus 4.3 percent) and by consecutive reductions in the following three months. Lula: Brussels, not Paris, will decide EU-Mercosur free-trade deal Read more... Lula: Brussels, not Paris, will decide EU-Mercosur free-trade deal The downward trend of the previous years, added to the sharp contraction of those months, positioned the minimum wage below the levels registered in 2001, prior to the convertibility crisis, as well as Implying an erosion of almost 60 percent from the highest level in that series in September, 2011. The average wage of the formally employed as surveyed by the INDEC national statistics bureau also registered a sharp contraction between November and December last year. Milei confirms his ‘chainsaw’ will keep running next year Read more... Milei confirms his ‘chainsaw’ will keep running next year However, decelerating inflation, added to the wage negotiations within the framework of collective-bargaining agreements, have prevented the fall in the purchasing power from continuing with a process of recovery beginning afterwards. Last August registered an increase of 0.8 percent with 0.3 percent in September. Despite that, last September (the last available figure) the purchasing power of the average wage continued to be 1.5 percent inferior to last November with the percentage of increase diminishing markedly since August. The panorama of August and September becomes more critical when analysing the data of the average remuneration of registered private- sector wage-earners, as recorded by the SIPA pension system. Betting on Milei, Argentine investors choose longer duration Read more... Betting on Milei, Argentine investors choose longer duration After growing in real terms in June (+four percent) and July (+2.8 percent), a fall of 2.5 percent was experienced in August while in September the preliminary data released by the Labour Department show a new fall of one percent. This implies a loss of purchasing power of three percent below that registered last November while accumulating a fall of 20 percent from the maximum level of the series registered in May, 2013. – TIMES/NA

Trump BENDS THE KNEE to Mexico President in 24 Hours

Uruguay Elects A New President

The Politics of Humility Uruguay Center-left opposition candidate Yamandú Orsi won the presidential election in Uruguay, ousting the conservative government coalition candidate, Alvaro Delgado, by a few points in Sunday’s runoff elections, the Guardian reported Monday. Orsi, a 57-year-old former history teacher from humble beginnings, secured 49.8 percent of the vote while Delgado won 45.9 percent, official results showed. Orsi’s party, the Broad Front, also won a majority in the upper house of parliament, but neither coalition clinched an absolute majority in the lower house. “The horizon is brightening,” said Orsi, addressing his supporters. Delgado and Uruguay’s current President Luis Lacalle Pou, both from the National party, conceded the election and offered to help with the transition of power ahead of the swearing-in on March 1. The Broad Front alliance, headed by Orsi, will now return to power after five years of a conservative coalition government. The Broad Front had governed Uruguay for 15 years before it was beaten by Lacalle Pou, according to the BBC. Orsi is seen as the protege of former President José Mujica, a popular leader who, known for his modesty, was labeled with the moniker, “the world’s poorest president.” Orsi himself grew up in a rural area in a house without electricity. He then worked as a history teacher, becoming active in local politics, and later becoming mayor of Canelones, a small city in southern Uruguay. Addressing the nation after his win, Orsi said, “I’m going to be the president who builds a more integrated country, where we set aside our differences and nobody is left behind, not economically, socially or politically.” He intends to govern with a “moderate left” approach and refrain from major policy shifts in the traditional and relatively wealthy nation.

What SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell just revealed after Starship Flight 6 launch...

A Tulane University Archiologist Discovers A Lost Mayan City

Lost in the Jungle Stumbling upon an undiscovered ancient city full of gold is usually the hallmark of great action films. But in real life, it is rare to find a lost city – especially by accident. However, that is exactly what happened when a doctoral student in anthropology was analyzing publicly available drone data of Mexico and stumbled across a huge ancient Mayan city buried beneath a dense jungle canopy. Archeologist Luke Auld-Thomas of Tulane University in New Orleans discovered the city while surfing the internet and examining data from modern aerial mapping technology known as LiDAR (light detection and ranging). “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organization for environmental monitoring,” Auld-Thomas told the BBC. Auld-Thomas and co-author Marcello Canuto, in a new study, surveyed three different sites in the jungle and found 6,674 structures – essentially a huge ancient city that may have been home to 30-50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 CE, more than the population of the area today. The city, which was about 16.6 square kilometers (6.4 square miles), had two major centers with large buildings around 1.2 miles apart, linked by dense houses and causeways, according to the study. It had two plazas with temple pyramids, where Maya people would have worshipped, hidden treasures like jade masks and buried their dead. It also had a court where people would have played an ancient ball game and possibly a reservoir, indicating that people used the landscape to support a large population. The team named the city “Valeriana” after a nearby lagoon and said it has the “hallmarks of a capital city,” was second only to the density of the Calakmul site of the Mayans, which is about 62 miles away. The research team also believes that the city probably collapsed between 800 and 1,000 CE, due to issues such as climate variability and adaptation struggles because of the city’s density. At the same time, warfare with other cities and the conquest of the region by Spanish invaders in the 16th century also contributed to the eradication of Maya city-states, the BBC wrote. This study is the first to reveal Maya structures in the east-central Campeche region that runs from southeastern Mexico to Belize which the Maya inhabited from about 1000 BCE to 1500 CE. But with new technology such as laser and drone mapping, archeologists are finding more instances of ancient human activity. Now the team has emphasized the need for more field research along with drone usage to map the region. The problem is, added Auld-Thomas, there’s much more to find and too little time. “One of the downsides of discovering lots of new Maya cities in the era of Lidar is that there are more of them than we can ever hope to study,” he said. Share this story

A Small South American Country Shines

The Big Carrot Suriname The World Bank considers the South American country and former Dutch colony of Suriname to be an “upper middle-income” country due to its rich natural resources. But it noted that the country’s mining and other revenues declined in 2015, sparking a fiscal crisis that grew worse when the coronavirus pandemic struck. As a result, more than 17 percent of the country’s citizens lived in poverty in 2022. A year later, tensions in the country exploded over the economic situation: In February 2023, protesters broke into the country’s legislature in the capital of Paramaribo after President Chan Santokhi agreed to implement austerity measures such as an end to fuel subsidies and tax hikes to comply with an International Monetary Fund loan agreement, World Politics Review explained. Now new oil money might change that trajectory. French oil giant TotalEnergies recently announced $3 billion in engineering contracts for the GranMorgu offshore drilling project that could tap more than 700 million barrels of oil with production scheduled from 2028, reported Reuters. These investments were part of TotalEnergies and American exploration firm APA’s $10.5 billion offshore drilling plan for GranMorgu, Suriname’s first such project. In the local language Sranan Tongo, “GranMorgu” means “new dawn” and “Goliath grouper,” noted TotalEnergies in a statement that also promised a total of 6,000 new jobs for a country of about 600,000 people. “Today is a historic day for Suriname,” said Chan in early October when the project was announced, the Associated Press reported. “This is a game-changer.” Now the pressure is on the oil industry and Chan to demonstrate how regular people will benefit. Suriname has around 2.4 billion barrels in reserves, noted OilPrice.com, leading observers to believe that the country can expect a windfall of cash like neighboring Guyana did after opening up oil fields to international drillers. Ratings agency Moody’s agreed, boosting Suriname’s credit rating on the promise of oil revenues, Bloomberg wrote. The reality might not be so great, however. Analyst John Gerdes of Gerdes Energy Research told Barron’s that Suriname might have only a third as much oil production potential as Guyana, for example. Some constituencies in Suriname also believe they are not set to benefit. For example, Suriname has one of the largest untouched rainforests in the world and is also the planet’s most densely forested country. But the country is the only one in South America that hasn’t recognized the land rights of Indigenous communities that want to protect the forest amid a logging boom, Mongabay reported. How Chan distributes the new capital will be key. Meanwhile, some believe that while the Indigenous peoples of the country may not benefit from the oil boom, the forest actually might, wrote the Financial Times. Officials in the country say the oil boom, ironically, presents an opportunity to jump-start demand for Suriname’s fledgling sovereign carbon credits scheme, which to date hasn’t been very successful, mainly because there aren’t many international companies operating in the country – yet. The idea, possibly to be voted on in the legislature this fall, is to require all companies operating in Suriname to purchase its sovereign carbon credits so as to offset their in-country emissions. That money would go to its climate fund, mainly to protect its forest. “We are following this mechanism in which we can receive climate finance through carbon credits – OK, we’re doing that, but it’s still not working,” Suriname’s minister of the environment, Marciano Dasai, told the newspaper. “But now, we have oil and gas.” Share this story

Drug Dealing And The Temptation Of Big Money

I wrote a biography of the international drug dealer Paul Lir Alexander (o barao da cocaina). Paul was born in the small fishing village of Laguna, Santa Catarina, Brasil to an unwed mother. He started life poor and humble. Before Paul became a drug dealer, he had a distinguished career as an Israeli Mossad agent. He earned two college degrees at a prestigious private university in Rio de Janeiro. He learned to speak six languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, and Yiddish.) He created a brilliant talent agency, Sunshine Entertainment Limitada, that created the Brasilian superstar Xuxa. Just on that basis, he became a millionaire in his 20s. Then Paul became a drug dealer importing some $9 billion worth of cocaine to the US and Australia. At the time of his arrest in April 1993 at the age of 37, Paul had the following assets: 1) A Hawker Sidley corporate jet. 2) A $5 million apartment in the Barra da Tijuca section of Rio de Janeiro. 3) A $800,000 house in north Miami Beach. 4) A 6,400-hectare (15,874 acres) ranch in Brasil. 5) A $25 million mega yacht. 6) Paul was completing the raising of over $300,000,000 to buy The Manchete Television Network in Brasil. I asked Paul why he went into drug dealing. He calmly replied that he could not resist the temptation of so much money. Over 30 years later, the temptation of big money to be made from drug dealing is still alive and well. The senior Spanish officer in charge of fighting drug importation into Spain has been arrested for drug dealing and money laundering. Here is the story: Spain Spain arrested the former top law enforcement officer in charge of the unit investigating fraud and corruption after the Guardian reported this week that around $22 million was hidden in the walls of his house. Óscar Sánchez Gil, the former head of the fraud and anti-money laundering division of Spain’s national police force, was arrested last week along with 15 other people, including his girlfriend, also a police officer in the Madrid region. During the raid on his home, police found the cash hidden in the walls and ceilings of the couple’s home near the Spanish capital. Officers also found more than $1 million in his office. The couple has been charged with drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption, and membership of a criminal organization and have been jailed until trial. Spanish media said the arrests were linked to the seizure last month of 13 tons of cocaine that arrived in the southern port of Algeciras from Ecuador, the largest-ever haul of cocaine in Spain and “one of the largest seizures in the world.” Police operations uncovered links between the importer of the drugs and Sánchez Gil. He was already under suspicion by his colleagues who had tapped his phone, the newspaper El Mundo reported. He is suspected of having worked for the drug traffickers for “at least five years,” providing information on the surveillance of containers in Spanish ports, which enabled them to avoid checks, Agence France-Presse wrote. Spain is a main entry point for drugs into Europe because of its close ties with former colonies in Latin America such as major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, and its proximity to Morocco, a top cannabis producer.

The Girl From Ipanema by Joyce Partise

Satellite Reconnaissance And The Falkland's War

Falklands The Royal Fleet Auxiliaries Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram were attacked by Argentine A-4 Skyhawks on June 8, 1982, during the Falklands War. Both ships were hit, with heavy loss of life on Sir Galahad, which was still burning on June 13 when an American HEXAGON satellite took this photo. The war ended June 14 with the surrender of Argentine forces on the islands. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger. Satellite reconnaissance and the Falklands War by Dwayne A. Day Monday, November 4, 2024 Bookmark and Share On June 8, 1982, Lieutenant Carlos Cachon was leading a flight of A-4 Skyhawk jets at low level over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Argentine forces had invaded the islands in April, prompting the United Kingdom to send a naval and amphibious force to retake them. The war had gotten bloody in May, with significant troop and ship losses on both sides. Now it was about to get even worse for the British. What remains largely unknown and unexplored is the degree of US intelligence support to the British forces in the Falklands War. According to Skyhawks Over the South Atlantic, by Santiago Rivas, Cachon and his fellow pilots crossed into and out of clouds and rain that hampered their visibility, then flew over a large number of British troops on the ground. Another pilot suddenly yelled “There are the ships!” and Cachon saw “two grey silhouettes” against the coast. He began his attack and released his bombs, which hit the center of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Sir Galahad. Another pair of pilots hit the RFA Sir Tristram. In total, 43 Welsh Guards and seven ship’s crew were killed in what became known to the British as “the darkest day of the fleet.” Sir Galahad burned and kept burning for days. Sir Tristram was less heavily damaged. Falklands The burning RFA Sir Galahad along with RFA Sir Tristram near Fitzroy on the eastern side of the islands. When this image was taken, Sir Galahad had been burning for five days. The ship would later be towed out to sea and sunk. RFA Sir Tristram was salvaged. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger. On June 13, a HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite overflew the islands. The weather was usually bad for overhead reconnaissance during the war, but on this day portions of the islands were clear. The HEXAGON photographed broad swaths of the islands. The HEXAGON could cover immense amounts of territory in a single image. Five days after the two ships had been successfully attacked, Sir Galahad was still burning, its smoke plume visible in one of the satellite’s images. But the downside of HEXAGON’s impressive capabilities was that it achieved them using film, and that film sat inside the satellite until the reentry vehicle that carried it was ejected on June 15 and recovered over the North Pacific. Then it had to be recovered, transported to Rochester, New York for development, and sent to Washington for imagery interpretation. The war ended on June 14; by the time the film showing the burning Sir Galahad reached an interpreter’s desk on June 24, the war had been over for ten days. Falklands The RFA Sir Galahad before the Falklands War. British forces suffered significant losses of ships and personnel during the war. Argentina also lost several ships and had a much higher loss of life. (credit: Wikimedia Commons) The Falklands War Although the history of the war has been extensively studied in the four decades since it took place, the extent of American support to Great Britain has only come to light in the past ten years or so. What remains largely unknown and unexplored is the degree of US intelligence support to the British forces. Now, more information on that subject is becoming available. British warships sailed from ports in the United Kingdom only a few days after the invasion, but it took them several weeks to arrive at the islands. When the war finally ended several months later, the toll was clear. The Argentines suffered 649 killed, including 323 men lost when the cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by a British nuclear submarine in early May, and Great Britain suffered 258 of its soldiers, sailors, and marines killed. The Royal Navy lost two destroyers, two frigates, and three other vessels to Argentine Exocet missiles and bombs. RFA Sir Tristram was eventually transported to the United Kingdom and salvaged, but RFA Sir Galahad was too heavily damaged and was towed out to sea and sunk. The Reagan Administration initially sought a diplomatic solution to maintain favor with Latin American countries that it was enlisting in opposition to communist influence in Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. But behind the scenes, the United States offered access to American weapons, perhaps most importantly the latest version of the Sidewinder air-to-air missile, which was hurriedly integrated onto British Harrier jump jets. Falklands The runway at Port Stanley was seized by Argentine forces soon after the invasion. The Royal Air Force carried out long-range bombing attacks on the islands in May and June. Although damage to the runway was minimal, the attacks prevented Argentina from operating fast jets from the runway and instead launched them from Argentina, which reduced their time over their targets. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger American satellite reconnaissance and the war On May 11, a Titan IIID rocket roared off its pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California carrying the 17th HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite. HEXAGON had first entered service in 1971, was the size of a school bus, and had earned the nickname “Big Bird,” mostly from people who did not know about the top secret satellite. The HEXAGON’s primary role was imaging large areas of the Earth to spot targets at medium resolution of approximately 30 to 90 centimeters. This was good enough to identify most military vehicles, but not sufficient to determine fine technical details—for example, it could spot a MiG-29 fighter at an airfield, but not determine if it was a single or two-seater. The HEXAGON had two powerful cameras and the film that ran through them was deposited in four satellite reentry vehicles at the front of the satellite. When a reentry vehicle was full, it was ejected and reentered northwest of Hawaii for recovery, and after the fourth reentry vehicle reached Earth about six months after launch, the satellite was useless. The time from when an image was taken until when it reached human eyes was a minimum of a few days but more likely a few weeks. The HEXAGON joined the third and fourth KH-11 KENNEN satellites already in orbit. KENNEN satellites had a near-real-time capability, beaming their images back to the ground within minutes of taking them. The KENNENs probably had resolution about 30 centimeters at the time, and they imaged far less territory than the HEXAGON, but they were fast. What is now known is that a HEXAGON satellite also photographed the islands on two days: May 31 and June 13. In their polar orbits, the two KH-11s made multiple passes near the islands during the conflict and flew almost directly over them approximately 30 times in two and a half months. Most of their passes were to the east or west, and the satellites would have had to turn to the side to image the islands, degrading their imagery. How often they imaged the islands is unknown, although they had many opportunities. The limiting factor was most likely cloud cover: the Falkland Islands were often clouded over during April, May, and June—fall heading into winter in the southern hemisphere. British forces reported that it was usually cloudy and often rainy during much of the conflict, and the two KENNENs probably had few opportunities even when they flew near the islands. KH-11-4 passed near the islands on May 28, but would have had to look 64 degrees off-nadir (i.e. 64 degrees off straight down), meaning that the satellite would have to turn far to the side and image at an angle through more atmosphere, degrading the imagery. But KH-11-3 also passed near the island, about 35 degrees off-nadir, a much more reasonable angle for imaging the ground. On that day the islands were relatively cloud-free. Falklands A HEXAGON image of the Port Stanley airfield taken on June 13, 1982. The craters from the Vulcan bombing raid are clearly visible. The war ended on June 14. This image did not get analyzed in the United States until June 24, demonstrating the primary limitation of the HEXAGON's film-return technology. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger On May 28, the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) produced a cable on “improved defensive measures, Port Stanley area, Falkland Islands.” The cable, which was declassified in 2011, reported that Argentina had improved its defensive positions around the Port Stanley area and deployed fighter and ground attack aircraft to the airfield. The Argentine forces had also constructed defensive positions on the southern outskirts of the town. They had deployed possible anti-aircraft sites on the coast to the east and erected 50 probable two-man tents as well as dug trenches. The cable does not state what satellite provided the imagery of the area, but it was most likely KH-11-3, because KH-11-4 was too far away on its passes near the islands, and the HEXAGON did not return its film until over two weeks later on June 15. Because the imagery was immediately available, it was almost certainly shared with the British government. Recently, at the request of Australian researcher Harry Stranger and this author, HEXAGON imagery was obtained of the Falklands during the conflict. What is now known is that a HEXAGON satellite also photographed the islands on two days: May 31 and June 13. On May 31, HEXAGON Mission 1217 imaged all the key locations, including Royal Navy warships then engaged in deploying troops to shore. Those ships, located in San Carlos Sound, had come under attack on several previous occasions, but on this day they were not attacked. On June 13, the HEXAGON again photographed the islands, again spotting the ships, but also spotting RFA Sir Galahad and RFA Sir Tristram on the eastern side of the islands. No intelligence cables about the British ships have been released. However, in 2011 the CIA declassified a cable from June 24 that refers to imagery “acquired on the day prior to the Argentine surrender,” i.e. June 13. That cable, titled “damage and defenses, Port Stanley, Falkland Islands,” refers to damage to the airfield and surrounding areas. The airfield had been bombed by Royal Air Force Vulcan bombers in a daring raid in May. Although the bombs barely hit the runway and it did not shut down the airfield, the attack prompted Argentina to decide not to base fighter planes on the island, which dramatically increased their distance from the attacking British forces and reduced their time over their targets. The cable continued: “Numerous craters were present throughout the area. The damage from three craters on the runway had been repaired.” (A possible reference to craters observed in the May 31 HEXAGON imagery.) “The hangar at the support area was partially damaged and one of the support buildings was completely destroyed.” Notably, the May 28 cable did not refer to destroyed aircraft at the airfield, but the June 15 cable did. Falklands Royal Navy warships near the port of San Carlos imaged by an American HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite on May 31, 1982. This area became known as “Bomb Alley” to the British, because several ships were successfully attacked and sunk here. This image was not analyzed in the United States until after the war was over. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger Falklands history The HEXAGON imagery arrived on analysts’ light tables after the war was over. The KENNEN imagery was more timely and could have had some value to British forces. It is unknown if any of the imagery was directly shared with the task force, or even if the information in the May 28 intelligence cable was shared, although it seems likely. It has also been previously reported that the United States shared signals intelligence data collected from satellites with the United Kingdom (see “Buccaneers of the high frontier: Program 989 SIGINT satellites from the ABM hunt to the Falklands War to the space shuttle,” The Space Review, November 7, 2022.) In 2011, the National Reconnaissance Office, which operated both the KENNEN and HEXAGON satellites, released a declassified film about the HEXAGON. Following a short clip of Argentine Skyhawks attacking Royal Navy ships, a HEXAGON photograph was deleted—that image was probably a HEXAGON image of ships in San Carlos Bay, which the British had nicknamed “Bomb Alley.” Falklands Close-up of several British ships in San Carlos on May 31. The HEXAGON imagery is sufficiently detailed to identify the types of ships. Satellite photo via Harry Stranger Both the United Kingdom and the government of Argentina have declassified substantial military records of the conflict, and pilots, sailors, and government officials on both sides have written memoirs about their involvement. The extent of US support to the British is still largely unknown, but these documents and photographs indicate that some new evidence is finally coming to light, over four decades since the guns went silent in the South Atlantic and the hulk of RFA Sir Galahad was sent to the bottom of the sea. The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Harry Stranger, Jonathan McDowell, and Ted Molczan. Special thanks to Mariano P. Sciaroni. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.