Chris Martenson: Welcome to this Peak
Prosperity podcast. I'm your host, Chris Martenson.
Well, the emerging
market crisis of early 2014 is raging along, and several countries are
becoming increasingly chaotic and desperate. One of those is Argentina.
Of course, Argentineans are experiencing this sort of thing, having just
sort of gone through it all back in 2001. So I'm wondering how things
are unfolding and what sorts of lessons learned are being applied by
those living there.
Today we are fortunate to be speaking with Fernando Aguirre, also known
as FerFAL, author of Surviving the Economic Collapse, the book. FerFAL
experienced the hyperinflationary destruction of Argentina's economy
personally in 2001 and has since dedicated his professional career to
educating the public about his experiences and observations of its
lingering aftermath.
Of course, it looks like we are having a renewed
version of it today. His blog, Surviving in Argentina, found at ferfal.blogspot.com, is covering the events as they unfold, as well as
well more other general topics around the idea of navigating an economic
dislocation wherever you happen to live.
Given rising concerns about the possibility of an unfortunate conclusion
to central-bank meddling, our listeners are increasingly asking to hear
from voices that have firsthand experience with what it is like to live
through a large, shall we say, adjustment process.
FerFAL, so glad you could join us.
Fernando Aguirre: Chris, it is great to be talking with you again.
Chris Martenson: Okay. Bring us up to date. What is happening in
Argentina right now with respect to its currency, the peso?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, actually pretty recently, January 22, the peso
lost 15% of its value.
It has devalued quite a bit. It ended up losing
20% of its value that week, and it has been pretty crazy since then.
Inflation has been rampant in some sectors, going up to 100% in food,
grocery stores 20%, 30% in some cases. So it has been pretty
complicated. Lots of stores don't want to be selling stuff until they
get updated prices.
Suppliers holding on, waiting to see how things go,
which is something that we are familiar with because that happened back
in 2001 when everything went down as we know it did.
Chris Martenson: So 100%, 20% inflation; are those yearly numbers?
Fernando Aguirre: Those are our numbers in a matter of days. In just one
day, for example, cement in , one of the towns in Southern Argentina,
went up 100% overnight, doubling in price.
Grocery stores in Córdoba,
even in Buenos Aires, people are talking about increase of prices of 20,
30% just these days.
I actually have family in Argentina that are
telling me that they go to a hardware store and they aren't even able to
buy stuff from there because stores want to hold on and see how prices
unfold in the following days.
Chris Martenson: Right. So this is one of those great mysteries of
inflation. It is obviously flying money, right?
So everyone is trying to
get rid of their money. You would think that would actually increase
commerce. But if you are on the other end of that transaction, if you
happen to be the business owner, you have every incentive to withhold
items as long as possible. So one of the great ironies, I guess, is that
even though money is flying around like crazy, goods start to disappear
from the shelves.
Is that what you are seeing?
Fernando Aguirre: Absolutely. Shelves halfway empty.
The government
always trying to muscle its way through these kind of problems, just
trying to force companies to stock back products and such, but they just
keep holding on. For example, gas has gone up 12% these last few days.
And there is really nothing they can do about it. If they don't increase
in prices, companies just are not willing to sell.
It is a pretty tricky
situation to be in.
Chris Martenson: Is there any sort of price controls going on right now?
Has anything been mandated?
Fernando Aguirre: As you know, price controls don't really work.
I mean,
they tried this before in Argentina. Actually, last year one of the big
news was that the government was freezing prices on food and certain
appliances. It didn't work. Just a few days later those supposedly
frozen prices were going up.
As soon as they officially released them
they would just double in price.
Chris Martenson: Let me ask you this, then: How many people in Argentina
actually still have money in Argentine banks in dollars?
One of the
features in 2001 was that people had money in dollars, in the banks.
There was a banking holiday; a couple of weeks later, banks open up;
Surprise, you have the same number in your account, only it's pesos, not
dollars. It was an effective theft, if I could use that term.
Is anybody
keeping money in the banks at this point, or how is that working?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, first of all, I would like to clarify for people
listening, those banks that did that are the same banks that are found
all over the world.
They are not like strange South American,
Argentinean - they are the same banks. If they are willing to steal from
people in one place, don't be surprised if they are willing to do it in
other places as well.
Chris Martenson: No surprise here.
Fernando Aguirre: Exactly.
Don't be surprised if it happens to you as
well. To answer your question, people really don't trust banks much, and
especially since there was an official ban of some sort for the average
people to buy foreign currency, so they just go to the black market. And
the average Argentine person has his money under the couch.
They buy
dollars at the black market at a much higher price. The peso is
officially eight pesos per dollar; unofficially, it is almost 13 pesos
per dollar. There is quite a difference there.
Still, people choose to
get away from the official currency.
Chris Martenson: Now, I understand the Argentine government has limited
the number of dollars you can officially purchase to what - $2,000 a
month? Something like that?
Fernando Aguirre: It's not even that.
Eighty percent of Argentines are
simply not allowed to buy dollars. You have to present your income, and
then the authorities decide based on your salary what you are allowed to
buy.
It is generally going to be $50, $100, $200 a month, if that. In
many cases, even doctors, people with very good wages, they are not even
allowed to buy dollars whatsoever.
Chris Martenson: But that would be at the official exchange rate of
around eight [pesos per dollar]?
Fernando Aguirre: Exactly. What most people do then is go to what they
call cuevas, like caves, which is places where from the black market you
buy dollars at a much higher price, of course.
Chris Martenson: Now, what happens if you want to, say, duck over the bay
and go to Uruguay? Can you buy dollars there?
Fernando Aguirre: That is something that has been happening quite a bit.
People have been going over to Uruguay and taking advantage of that.
Of
course, Uruguay has had to implement some of their own restrictions, and
they weren't very happy with people going over there. What they started
doing is Argentina started placing checkpoints in some of the well-known
spots where you deport, where you get a boat to cross over to Uruguay,
so they started controlling who was traveling, what they were doing.
Pretty much a blatant invasion of privacy.
Chris Martenson: Not surprised.
So let's imagine that people in
Argentina have managed to squirrel away as much as they can in the
mattress in the form of harder currencies, but still all of this is
unfolding. We talked about some of the economic impacts, that there are
things disappearing from shelves.
What else is happening economically,
and how are people coping?
Fernando Aguirre: Imagine you have your wages, your salaries are still
in pesos. And this basically melts your purchasing power right in front
of you.
People are trying to stock up on certain food products; they
know that what they buy today is going to be costing maybe 2, 3 times as
much just a few weeks, even a few months from now. So they are dealing
with a problem of empty shelves, as we said before.
There is also limits
to how much you can buy - sugar, vegetable oil - there are limits, and
it is usually going to be one or two units per family.
Chris Martenson: With the idea being that obviously you’d want to
purchase early and often when you are in inflationary times, right?
Fernando Aguirre: Exactly. Absolutely.
Chris Martenson: So if the store shelves are bare, what is the impact on
jobs going to be, going down the road?
Fernando Aguirre: There is no way of being certain of anything in
Argentina, especially with this scenario.
There are people that honestly
do go hungry, but for the average guy that does have a job right now, he
is going to be getting by. Maybe he is going to have to be eating
something else; maybe he is going to have to eat more rice than meat and
such.
At the same time, having lived in Argentina for so long, you get
used to living week by week, month by month. That is as far as you can
plan. There is already no credit. There is already no credit cards to
make 12-month payments or 6-month payments.
Things get just a little bit
tougher.
Chris Martenson: Now the government of Argentina at this point in time,
are they committing the same mistakes that led to the 2001 crisis?
You
know, there was this recovery period, a little debt default, everything
seemed to be going well again; of course, as we now know, much of that
was due to the fact that the whole world was being reflated with dollars
everywhere, and yen and Euros and other things. So the developed world
was flooding the world with dollars.
The so-called "undeveloped" parts
of the world were benefitting from all of that. Now that the tide has
turned, governmentally are you seeing the same mistakes made, which was,
Wow, times are good; let's just pretend that everything is right and
good.
Or had real structural reforms been made?
Fernando Aguirre: No, that is one of the things that worries people the
most.
There is really no plan for anything. The idea is just to deny
what is happening. It is like going to the doctor; you are sick and you
are not telling him what is happening to you; there is no way of solving
that.
This is a government that has always had communist, very left-leaning
idea, even though at the same time these are people that have gotten
themselves incredibly wealthy beyond our imagination, thanks to their
policies. There is no plan whatsoever.
Right now, for example, the
president has seized all sorts of communication. She is just not making
public appearances of any kind. The Minister of Economy, he has these
Keynesian ideas of economy that really don't work.
More restrictions.
More freezing of prices that just doesn't get the job done.
Chris Martenson: In your book you mentioned that actual survival skills
that some people think of - boiling water in bamboo contraptions and
whatnot - that those are relatively low on the coping totem pole, and
that things like physical fitness, haggling, extreme budgeting, those
are more important early on.
How does that advice map into what is
happening in Argentina right now?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, it is something that people are - I think they
never got rid of those skills.
They needed them to survive ever since.
In times like these, it is especially important to know how to handle
your own personal finances. Know how to budget. Buy as cheap as you can.
Have a good grasp on your home economy.
Also finding ways of creating
more income. Maybe starting your own side business. Anyone can have a
profession, even a hobby, that can be capitalized in some way.
That is
something that we did in 2001; that is something that people are doing
right now as well.
Chris Martenson: How about alternative economies? If your currency
system breaks down, you find other ways of conducting transaction,
barter being the lowest form of that.
What sorts of things are arising
or would you expect to arise as the currency system falls apart?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, the barter economy is something that we did
experience in 2001 when the economy fully collapsed, and banks just
closed, and there was really just no way of getting by.
At the same
time, you had huge amounts of unemployment. So people just traded
whatever it is that they had, or skills they had, for what they needed.
Eventually we realized that you still need some form of currency.
I think that there is not going to be a huge increase in barter economy.
Not even very significant. But we are going to be seeing quite a bit of
loss of standards of living as people just focus more on surviving than
anything else.
These measures taken by the government, the inflation
especially targeting those that still have something to be taken away
from them, which is what is left of the Argentine middle class, it is
going to be more people becoming poor as time goes by.
Chris Martenson: That dynamic could create some social tensions, as it
turns out that certain individuals are fantastically wealthy by the same
process.
It is really a point I want to sort of dig at here. We saw this
in Weimar, Germany in 1923 to 1928. It is talked about as this
extraordinary wealth destruction that devastated the middle class.
But
if you twist it slightly, it wasn't a destruction; it was a transfer.
The land didn't go away. The houses didn't go away.
The productive
assets are still there, maybe underutilized, but fundamentally, who
owned them shifted enormously. So I understand there is this very
popular way for historians - who knows who is funding them - to look
back in time and say, Oh, it was wealth destruction. Like a meteor hit.
It just went away.
It doesn't go away, right? It goes from point A to
point B. Is there a sense that people understand that process and that
that could create tension?
Fernando Aguirre: I don't think that most people understand what you are
saying in terms of wealth not disappearing. As you say, there is still
the buildings, there is still the infrastructure.
There is still the
work, the labor that people do. If you work your behind off all day
long, there is something there. Now the problem is that you are not
being compensated for your effort. But that wealth you are creating is
going somewhere.
And usually, as you say, it is being focused in a very
small number of people that are taking advantage of that.
A good example of that would be, in Argentina, the only thing really
worth something on a large scale was the production of soy agriculture.
The government slashed that with 80% tax, leaving basically nothing to
the producers. They got away with that for quite a bit of time.
Now that
the price of that particular commodity is going down, they really have
nowhere else to take money from.
Chris Martenson: It is the process. It happens over and over and over
again.
And so in this new Internet Age and with social media and
whatnot, I think it is possible for people to come across information
that would explain what is happening more readily than in times past.
But it is kind of the oldest game in the book. Certain people and
institutions create a whole lot of claims against an underlying economy.
Eventually, there are too many claims. And instead of the people who
made too many of those claims having to eat the losses for having made
some very bad loans and other decisions, it inevitably falls on having
the wealth be transferred and extracted from the remaining productive
portions of the society.
That can only go on so long, if I may use this
metaphor, until the parasite takes too much blood from the host. And
then there is some other sort of an adjustment process.
Do you see that
in the future?
Fernando Aguirre: I don't see it in the future; I see it in the past. It
happened in December last year.
Less than two months ago, there was
widespread rioting across the entire country in Argentina. The police
department in one province went on strike because that governor was not
aligned with the president. They punished him by not helping him out.
Now, as other police forces saw that the strike went on, they started
going on strike themselves.
The entire country's police force went on
strike. Ended up in rioting. Over a week of anarchy across the entire
country with at least 13 dead. Widespread looting. Thousands of stores
looted across the country.
That's the kind of scenario we are looking
at.
Chris Martenson: Obviously, that is a very turbulent period to be in.
What were most people doing during that? I assume the rioters were a
subset.
Was everybody else just holed up in their house?
Fernando Aguirre: People were holding on in their houses.
Some neighbors
were organizing to defend their communities. Many looters got killed.
There are stories we still haven't heard of. A lot of that we may never
hear of. I know for a fact there is plenty of footage on that on
YouTube, thousands of hours of video on that.
It was really widespread,
and people just fending for themselves because there was no government
controlling anything for at least a week.
Chris Martenson: And who was out doing the looting? Was this your
typical 18-to-25-year-old male cohort, or was this more widespread?
Fernando Aguirre: It's interesting, because of course some of the
people, you already have a good idea who may end up doing that.
You
know, some of the known elements that we always see when there is
rioting and looting, taking advantage of that. But then there were
people with fancy 4x4 trucks just parking it in a large store and
loading it up with appliances, washing machines, TVs.
There was quite a
bit of madness during those times.
Chris Martenson: Interesting. And this was widespread. This wasn't just
in the one metropolitan area.
Fernando Aguirre: It was widespread. Buenos Aires, Córdoba mostly.
Especially in the provinces across the country it was pretty bad, yes.
Chris Martenson: And that settled out a little bit for now, but how do
you see this playing out throughout the rest of this year?
Fernando Aguirre: Economists are talking about at least 30% inflation.
Some of the ones that are more positive say it is not going to be
getting worse than 40%. That may be true for some people; for the middle
class, it is going to be worse than that for sure. I think if things get
desperate enough, if people start getting hungry on a large scale, I
don't think they are going to be seeing the end of this year.
They are
going to be seeing the government - the president is going to have to
resign or call for early elections or some other measure.
Chris Martenson: I heard that Argentina is limiting if not banning
imports at this point in time to prevent the hemorrhaging of what
remaining foreign currency reserves; that is, dollars that they have - there is a burn rate on those reserves right now.
And when they go to
zero, you are in big, big trouble, especially if you have any debt that
is denominated in that currency. So given that, it is going to be very
difficult for people in Argentina to get their hands on imported goods - good luck if you have a repair that requires a part coming from
somewhere, things like that.
What is Argentina's main exports? Where is
it getting its hard currency from?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, soy production was called the "green oil," the
"green gold," some of the phrases used.
That was the main thing they
were exporting. And they still do, but they have already taxed that so
much, and the price is not going up anymore. And they already looted the
personal savings of people; the retirement funds, they nationalized
those.
There is really no one else to take away money from. As you were
saying, this isn't anything new; it has been going on for at least a
year that imports are basically stopped, and even for the average person
buying stuff online, it is not going through customs anymore. It is
getting stopped.
You are only allowed to buy two items and it can't be
more than $25; I mean, it's a pretty bad scenario to be in.
Chris Martenson: What I am wondering is around the advice you would
give, knowing that you can see these things coming.
My personal advice
is you want to prepare early and often, but that is when things are
still working well. I think that when you are in the throes of the
crisis, like Argentina is right now, that moment of going out and trying
to stockpile and accumulate, I actually think that is not a responsible
thing to do.
You can't have everybody trying to hoard at the same time,
because then that is really unfair and a lot of people get left out.
So
I think there is a strong case to be made for preparing early and often.
But once you are in the middle of it, that is no time to try and figure
out how you are going to try to take care of these things.
How many people do you think had done the prepare early and often model?
How many Argentineans saw this coming?
Fernando Aguirre: I think everyone saw this coming.
There is really no
way to expect anything else with the measures that we are taking.
Argentines are pretty much used to this sort of thing. They just roll
with it. What they don't have, they just do without.
They have family
helping each other. It is the way a lot of people have been living for
most of their adult life, if you think about it that way. I think that,
as you say, it is a good idea to be prepared in advance for this sort of
thing.
The supplies that we all know you should have - food, water, of
course - at home in case there are problems. But when something like
this happens in a country, it is so bad, it is not a short- or
medium-term period to go by.
I think the best thing, and what I did
myself, is just get out of there as soon as you can.
Chris Martenson: Let's talk about that. How many people do you think in
Argentina have left, and who do they tend to be?
Fernando Aguirre: Well, this started back in 2001, and at least 300,000
ended up in Spain. Some numbers vary, but easily over a million people
have left the country in all these years.
The thing is that those that
could leave, most of them ended up leaving close to the big economic
collapse in 2001. Last year a lot of people were also leaving. They
usually end up in Spain, in Italy, those that have European citizenship.
It is generally going to be younger people, especially because many
countries are more welcoming of younger workers than older ones.
Chris Martenson: Unfortunately, for the people who went to Spain, they
jumped out of the fire and right back into a frying pan.
Fernando Aguirre: Yes, exactly.
Chris Martenson: They have got to be feeling blighted at this point,
particularly with youth unemployment there at 50% or greater.
I want to
ask about that, then, because here is the question: What is really
different in your mind then between Argentina and the so-called "developed" nations, maybe Europe? Structurally, what is really
different?
Fernando Aguirre: The differences - yes, they are significant.
As you
said, people left Argentina, ended up in Spain and they saw this huge
crisis ongoing still. But at the same time, it is not a developing
nation. It is not a third-world country. There are quite a bit of
differences.
You can expect certain things from the political system in
Spain. You cannot expect basically anything from the Argentine
politicians. They themselves steal companies, like they did with Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), the Spanish petrol company.
There is really no legal frame to go by.
At the same time, in Spain, you at least know the legal system works.
There are certain safety nets that people can somewhat count on. There
is really none of that in Argentina. It is pretty much everyone taking
care of themselves and the government just not being there whatsoever.
I
know a lot of people that ended up in Spain, and as part of that
country, they know for a fact that they are just much better off than
living in Argentina.
One of the big things is of course, crime, which is out of control in
Argentina. Especially because the policy is to - same with the economy - just deny it. So it keeps getting worse.
Spain, you at least know you
are somewhat safe on the street.
Chris Martenson: That is a huge difference, of course, particularly when
we are talking about quality of life.
As you look wider across the
globe, it is always good if there is a border to duck across. From my
analysis, the world, particularly the developed nations, have been on a
credit binge that is at least four decades in the making. Maybe it will
go another decade or two; I don't know. Maybe it goes another two weeks;
I don't know.
Structurally, I see that there are too many claims against
too few actual resources. And the same dynamic of somehow the
already-well-connected are vacuuming up ever larger amounts. To me, that
is just a feature of a debt-based money system.
This is how they
operate. Obviously, in Argentina, when you throw in corruption on top of
that, it just exacerbates the problem.
But if you were going to be giving advice to people who are living in
countries that seem stable, that seem reasonable - they are in Spain,
they are in Ireland, they are in France, they are in America, they are
somewhere - do you think that there is a parallel here that they should
be aware of, in terms of how Argentina is operating, or is it just too
fundamentally different how Argentina is going to unfold versus anybody
else?
Fernando Aguirre: I think that Argentina is a good example of a
worst-case scenario. I don't see the dollar losing 20% of its value
overnight.
The dollar is not the peso. As bad as it may be, it is still
not the Argentine peso. I think that Argentina it is a good case study
to see how things get really bad.
And even if they don't get nearly as
bad as they did in Argentina, many developed nations, as you were
saying, U.S., places in Europe and such, they are seeing a little bit
more of it. It is just a little taste of what Argentina is like. And
life will be changing toward that direction a little bit. It is not
going to be getting that bad.
I don't think it is going to be getting
completely destroyed, as it happened with the Argentine economy, but
people are going to be seeing more inequality. There is going to be more
poor people. There is going to be more competition for each job. And you
will have to be a little bit more creative so as to sustain your quality
of life.
And there are going to be a lot of people who just have to
adapt to living in lower standards of living than they may have been
used to themselves not long ago.
Chris Martenson: We mentioned some of those coping things - physical
fitness, haggling, extreme budgeting. What else is on your list of
important skills to have?
Fernando Aguirre: I think it is a good point to insist on how important
it is to be marketable in a job market that is going to be more and more
competitive as time goes by.
Anything that you can add towards that. Any
additional trait or bonus that you can offer your employer. Or being
good at creating your income, starting your own business, even if it is
a small scale, doesn't matter as long as you have something to work
with. Managing your finances.
Trying to stay healthy and fit, because of
all of these things, people think that you are going to [need to] be
physical fit for some outrageous survival scenario; it is really a
matter of being well prepared for being more stressed and dealing with
more tension than you are used to.
Chris Martenson: Right. Of course, being physically fit is essential to
that.
Here is one of the main things that we are really about at Peak
Prosperity is this idea that the goal of life is to be happy and
fulfilled. It is still possible, we believe, to have a much, much lower
standard of living and a higher quality of life, to still really enjoy
life and live it fully, even though you have less material stuff.
This
is one of the main points we try to make, that if you are coasting along
and all of a sudden your stuff is taken away from you, that is a really
traumatic event, very stressful, and it hurts like crazy.
But if you,
yourself, made that same adjustment to the same lower amount of stuff,
it can be completely joyous, fine; a completely reasonable process. It
is really a difference of doing it on your own terms rather than having
it forced on you by some other terms.
I don't care what country you live
in; that seems like a reasonable way to live.
Fernando Aguirre: I think it's a great point. I think especially
Americans are maybe a little bit too used to finding pleasure in
materialistic stuff.
This sounds like kind of, Oh, you are all going
communist or something like that. No, it's not that. It is just
understanding really how important is the material part of your life.
It
has a place, for sure, but is it the most important aspect of your life?
Is that what defines you as a person? Or is it your family? Is it the
quality of time that you have in this life?
Chris Martenson: Exactly.
Sometimes the opportunity in a crisis is we
get to re-examine those things and become more conscious of them. So
that is, I think, always the silver lining in the story. And yet, it is
very clear that Argentina is a fuse that has been lit. It is going to
burn or smolder for a while. Thirty percent inflation is no fun. Sixty
percent is even less fun.
Who knows what the number will actually be.
Ultimately, there will be some process where this will have to burn
itself out, and then the rebuilding can start.
The thing that worries me about the developed world is that there has
not been a forest fire in our financial ecosystem for many decades now.
All of them have been squashed by the well-meaning firefighters in the
various central banks.
But of course, the tinder is just built, and we
always worry that the next forest fire will be just a little bit more
destructive than it should have been. And so, to that point, what I try
to advise people to do is just to be aware that these things can happen,
they do happen.
They are lessons learned and people can go to your blog
at ferfal.blogspot.com to read more about what is actually happening in
Argentina.
There are really instructive lessons in there because it's happening. Of
course, the culture dictates part of the outcome. I'm sure you would
have a very different outcome in Japan, because of demographics, because
of the culture, because of all kinds of reasons.
Understanding how
people behave when their money systems fall apart is pretty much
universal, at least to some extent. I think there are a lot of really
important things there for people to read about.
And for you, FerFAL, are you working on another book? What are you
working on now?
Fernando Aguirre: Yes.
I'm actually wrapping up a book on bugging out
and relocating, which is what I did when I left. I think it is going to
be a good book for people - some of them have been asking for something
like that. As you were talking about before, it is quite enlightening to
leave everything that you ever owned. We left, ourselves, with just two
pieces of luggage each.
Just two suitcases each. I remember being the
car and seeing, Okay, this is all we have. These are all of our material
possessions. And at the same time, a few weeks later when we were
settling over here, I was talking about it with my wife, and we said, We
don't need anything else.
We have everything that we need. And with
money, we buy the furniture that we need, whatever, the clothing;
everything else can be replaced.
What you cannot replace is yourself;
who you are, and your family.
Chris Martenson: Interesting. This book about moving to a new location,
would that apply equally well - are there lessons that might work within
a country? If I lived in Oakland and didn't like that...
Fernando Aguirre: Absolutely, yes.
I am not only discussing some of the
countries I was looking at; I am mostly talking about the mental process
and the way of analyzing each choice. That is why it is called Bugging
Out and Relocating. You can choose to relocate or not, and you may be
lucky enough to never have to do that. Now, bugging out is something
that can affect every single person.
You just don't know it. If your
house burns down, if there is a natural disaster of some sort, and you
have to just grab a small bag and leave and lose everything - happens
all the time to people for various reasons.
Chris Martenson: Well it happened to 100,000 people around Fukushima,
and that is a permanent sort of event as far as their lives are
concerned. Well, that is very interesting. We will look forward to that
when it comes out.
When do you think that is coming out?
Fernando Aguirre: Maybe for next month. I will send you a copy as soon
as I have one.
Chris Martenson: Great.
We will get it up on the site and let people
know about it. I am sure there are people who will be interested in
that. There are two main topics that people seem very interested in. One
is where should I live, which is germane to your book title and topic.
And the second is, the sense of feeling like they are living two lives.
They are stuck in a job, a path a set of circumstances that is not quite
fully their authentic expression. It is not quite what they would be
choosing if they had a blank sheet of paper, so they have a sense of
wanting to be in some more fulfilling life. So there is that sense of
somehow being trapped in the system, whatever that happens to be.
So
those are the two big things, where should I live and how should I live
I guess are those two big parts. I think those are perfectly reasonable,
prudent, normal, healthy things to be asking.
Particularly, when you
start seeing the trouble at the edges of the system, it is a very good
thing to ask early and ask often.
Fernando Aguirre: I think it is good to be helping people make those
decisions, and understanding that sometimes the grass looks greener on
the other side of the hill.
Sometimes you really do have to make a
choice, and it is not nice to regret not making a move if you chose to
do so, but also, there is going to be a lot of people after reading this
book who are going to be appreciating where they live and what they
have.
Chris Martenson: How about you? Do you regret moving?
Fernando Aguirre: No. Not one bit. Not at all. I couldn't be happier.
Especially seeing all of this going on. It is the best thing we could
have done, no doubt about it.
Chris Martenson: Congratulations on the foresight. I hope your book has
similar insights that can help people make their own decisions.
FerFAL, thank you so much for your time today.
Fernando Aguirre: Thanks, Chris. It is, as always, great talking with
you, and we have to do it again.
Chris Martenson: Absolutely.
