Macri's hilarious speech

Another hilarious speech by Macri.....

Macri promised a one-digit inflation and said: "INFLATION IS SOMETHING SIMPLE TO RESOLVE", "ENDING WITH INFLATION IS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD" and CONCLUDED " Having high Inflation is the demonstration one's inability to govern"..;)

Inflation is tipped to be over 40% this year a shocking figure considering how expensive things are as well as wages being frozen for most people . This article states that the inflation rate was close to 4% for the month of February 2019 .

https://uk.reuters.com/article/arge...es-again-in-challenge-for-macri-idUKL1N2111JA
 
Greek people if they have money love to enjoy life and are known to be extravagant . Unfortunately today those who have money are just a small percentage of the population that live in a few up market neighbourhoods of Athens similar to Buenos Aires. Most people though live on the minimum but with a small elite class that live in Palermo . Recoleta , Barrio Norte , Belgrano etc etc .
To judge a city by a few wealthy neighbourhoods is a grave mistake as many argentinians live in suburbs like La Matanza with a population of over 1 million They if they are lucky to be working and earn the minimum wage per month . The working poor of these neighbourhoods have to travel many hours a day just to be able to earn 500 pesos a day just 12 dollars more or less .
http://www.lamatanza.gov.ar/matanza/poblacion

Greece in 2008 had a minimum wage that was close to double what it is now and with costs of services that were a fraction of the cost of today . Still the minimum wage of 600 Euros a month is much higher than Argentinas .
At the beginning of 2018 Argentina overtook Greece for a higher minimum wage but then we had the devaluation and Argentina has dropped down the list

https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/12/28/greece-lags-behind-in-minimum-wage-purchasing-power/


The biggest issue in Greece is the outrageous cost of services for basics as Electricity and gas . Electrical costs are the highest in Europe sending many people into poverty . This to me is a great crime against humanity as public services should never be a weapon for the rich to tax the poor .

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2...ouseholds-increased-by-157-in-last-ten-years/

30% of Greeks are having problems to pay their electricity bills and many have to live with using candles or the light of a television to get by .

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...austerity-turned-off-the-lights-idUSKBN1781IQ
There is special tax contained in electricity, that's why it's so high. Many people in Athens have a switch to on/off water heater, or convert to gas heating.
 
Another hilarious speech by Macri.....

Macri promised a one-digit inflation and said: "INFLATION IS SOMETHING SIMPLE TO RESOLVE", "ENDING WITH INFLATION IS THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD" and CONCLUDED " Having high Inflation is the demonstration one's inability to govern"..;)
He must be thinking everyone is stupid.
 
There is special tax contained in electricity, that's why it's so high. Many people in Athens have a switch to on/off water heater, or convert to gas heating.
I tried this here, switching off/on electric water heater, it was mounted outside on balcony. No great savings....Going all electric (heat/water)is crazy,given the rates.
 
The numbers quoted in the Greek article seem to be a little bit off. He was talking about all the poor neighborhoods, did not mention anything about Kolonaki(Athens Recoleta) or Glyfada (Athens Palermo), these areas are the areas mostly bought by Golden Visa people, many wealthy people fled to Athens from middle east, from Turkey, Syria, Greece is the only country they feel comfortable, they like the identical food, they even look similar, feel like home. Many still have business in middle east, they just buy real estate in Greece to get residency and run away from their countries if something is wrong. I have met many turks in US who know the neighborhoods in Athens well.

I think one of the reasons for Greece to have slow recovery is that Greece does not have the power to print money, EU decides how much Euro Greeks can have, that screws the Greeks but keeps the inflation low for them. I have been visiting Athens in the past 3 years, and 5 times last year. Athens does not look anything like Buenos Aires in 2001. The restaurants are full, Greeks love to eat, drink and smoke outside. The average Greeks make more and have higher living standard than Argentines for sure. Spain is 1-2 notches higher than Argentina and Greece is at least 1 notch above Argentina in terms of pretty much everything. But one thing Argentines do better than Greeks is that Argentines save more for rainy days, they have seen bad days, they do not panic when high inflation comes, they like to travel, they are not big saving people but they save more than Greeks. Greeks have good medical cares and social support system, probably they worry less and spend when they have something in their pockets.

Maybe some middle class neighbourhoods have devalued less due to their close proximity to the centre of Athens . This is related to AIRBNB and investment properties . Other more wealthier neighbourhoods with larger houses like Paleo Psychico and Filothei have seen huge declines in prices more than 50% since their peak . This article from 2016 has interesting information

The last article shows clearly how the real estate market has been decimated in Greece from its peak in 2008 with 220.000 property sales in Greece to 2015 when only 15,000 property sales in Greece changed hands . If this can happen in Greece which is part of the Euro I cannot understand those who believe that Buenos Aires is somewhat inmune from huge property slumps.



http://www.ekathimerini.com/213094/...suburbs-suffer-most-from-property-price-slump

https://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/10/01/where-do-the-rich-greeks-live/

https://www.businessinsider.com/athens-richest-street-then-and-now-pictures-2015-6
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/09/rich-greeks.html
 
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Inflation is tipped to be over 40% this year a shocking figure considering how expensive things are as well as wages being frozen for most people . This article states that the inflation rate was close to 4% for the month of February 2019 .

https://uk.reuters.com/article/arge...es-again-in-challenge-for-macri-idUKL1N2111JA

Infobae reports that 161 countries will have lower inflation in 2019, than Argentina has experienced so far in 2019 ( 8% ?Jan., and Feb.2019)
 
I tried this here, switching off/on electric water heater, it was mounted outside on balcony. No great savings....Going all electric (heat/water)is crazy,given the rates.
I had the switch on and off in Athens, it did not help much, but everyone thinks that's helpful, funny. Many times I forgot to turn it on, the water becomes cold while I was showering. I stopped using it. Not all neighborhood has gas in Athens, that's the problem.
 
Inflation is tipped to be over 40% this year a shocking figure considering how expensive things are as well as wages being frozen for most people . This article states that the inflation rate was close to 4% for the month of February 2019 .

https://uk.reuters.com/article/arge...es-again-in-challenge-for-macri-idUKL1N2111JA

The limits of the Government's aspiration appears to be merely a gentler decline in the value of the peso while at the same time asserting it is going to toughen policy to achieve zero inflation - since imports will continue and will embody price rises (as them value of peso sinks), further weakening the Argentine current account, the pledges are hollow. The upside (from their viewpoint?) seems to be that devaluation makes exports cheaper (inc tourism) and should stimulate demand. It is a remarkable feature of the 2001-02 crisis that within 3-6 , months of the default, GDP had fallen 5% but then the economy began to expand, even while the financial system was in chaos, Exports then construction led a recovery that restored pre-crisis output levels by 2005. Poverty was more than 40% in 2002 and fell to less than half this within five years while real wages recovered (up by 40% 2002-7). So while Macri looks like a clown and spends all his time lampooning CK, I wonder if he is not trying to pull the same trick of driving the economy into recession in the expectation of growing exports, depressing real wages and living standards by unemployment and inflation thereby stifling imports, in the expectation that the IMF will not force him to default but he can still pull off a kind-of-recovery. He has left it very late to gain electoral credit for economic performance and this shows political as well as economic miscalculation as we must assume he wants to be re-elected. But is there the massive difference between Macri and CK that we all assume? Are they really polar opposites or shapeshifters who will follow similar paths?
 
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