Posted On: Thursday - May 30th 2019 7:38PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Americans Big-Biz Stupidity
much less this freakin' guy:
Peak Stupidity has not written very much about Preppers and Prepping though we admire the practice, and agree with those who see what's coming. In a future, pretty serious post that's been burning a hole in that blogging area over by the hippocampus, I'd like to write some about not so much "bugging out", the prepper term, but at least "bailing out" of this western center of stupidity. It's just a thought with no plans in the works. It comes when the stupidity seems endless and unstoppable.
"Where ya' gonna' go?" is the question. Believe me, if there were any country with more freedom than the little we have left, that was inhabited by any kind of people one can reasonably fit in with, I would be DOWN with it. I think of Latin America, and as we've written already in "Down to the Banana Republics... goes Fred Reed"*, that expatriate life can be very tempting, especially for the single guy. Your money can go a long way. The lifestyle, though corrupt and without much trust among men, can be more easygoing, and yes, the stupidity level may be officially just as high, but they don't take the stuff so seriously.
Let's go back to that important money thing. In that 2 y/o post, the exhortation to Fred Reed, the expatriate pundit, was "get your money out of US Dollars". The money may be worth a lot now, but what happens after the Global Financial Stupidity peaks, and the crash results in the loss of confidence in the un-backed no-longer-mighty BUCK?
For right now, though, your money can go a long way. It may just go a long way away from YOU, though. We still have enough financial law and due process left here, probably due to the country being run as a F.I.R.E. economy. However, down in Ole Mexico, the big financial firm Monex, or the Mexican version thereof, has just scammed Americans living down there out of their savings that had allowed them to have it made. A news site that we read from the Peninsular-Mexicans (that's the Yucatan) reports that American Expats say money they had at Monex is gone and the bank isn’t helping them.
Y eeez gone!
In late December, Kathy Machir called Marcela Zavala Taylor, her banker of nine years at Mexico’s Monex Casa de Bolsa, to get cash for contractors building her retirement home in San Miguel de Allende. Typically, Zavala would wire money or dispatch her assistant, Juan, on his motorcycle with an envelope full of pesos. Monex, with $5.2 billion in assets and operations in the U.S., was woven into the lives of Machir and the 10,000 other Americans who’ve moved to San Miguel de Allende.You don't say! "We don't need no steeeenkeeng passwords!"
The transfer didn’t happen. Juan didn’t show, Zavala didn’t return calls, and Kathy and Jim Machir discovered that their nest egg was gone. When the Machirs and other San Miguel expatriates met with Monex officials in early January, the bankers told some of them that about $40 million was missing from as many as 158 accounts, many belonging to English-speaking Americans. A dozen people interviewed by Bloomberg News say that bank statements Zavala sent them purporting to show full accounts were apparently falsified. Most say the bank has told them little since they filed complaints, and some say Monex tried to settle for far less than the balances owed. “When they told us we had 6 pesos [32¢] in our accounts, I just felt sick to my stomach,” Kathy Machir says. “Since then, they have not dealt with us in good faith.”
A notarized letter that Karger’s attorney sent to top Monex executives on April 15 lists 12 allegations of fraud, including transferring money to people whom the depositors didn’t know, making unauthorized investments, and changing account login information. “If a relatively low-level employee can go into your account, change your email address for notifications, change your password, redirect deposits, withdrawals, and wire transfers,” Karger says, “then you have a kindergarten-level security system safeguarding tens of millions of dollars.”So Peak Stupidity and the crash of your almighty dollars are not your only worry, Ameri-migos. This could be a more immediate concern. I'll say it again - DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY, DIVERSIFY. DIVERSIFYING IS OUR STRENGTH!
This kind of thing puts a damper on the thoughts of a new life in that part of the world. You'd better do some thinking before you pull the plug here.
* I've gotten really sick of the lies out of that formerly-decent pundit lately, so I'll leave Fred Reed, currently an American expatriate in Ole Mexico, out of this one.
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