Shareholders have been up in arms The New York Times reported May 30th. Then May 31st Reuters explains that while Spanish conglomerate Repsol lost 51% of their stake in YPF, they still held 6% that became twelve that Thursday when an Argentine family financial firm, fellow YPF shareholder, the Petersen Group, could not meet a loan requirement so Repsol was allowed to buy six more percent of their confiscated company, YPF. Though the Argentine president has so far refused to discuss compensation with Repsol, the proper strategic cases are in all the appropriate courts while Repsol picking up another 6% makes this all sound so modern and civilized. After all YPF began in Argentina in 1922.

It’s not as if average investors have leverage anyway, do they? President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner contends the April 16th confiscation occurred because the Spanish conglomerate, Repsol, had not invested enough in Argentina. Odds are Repsol’s YPF success did the industrial giant out of their 51% as much as Argentina’s desire to increase their share. It’s not the old days. Countries watch where the money flows and naturally want to protect their turf. Countries have been this way before, but not this sophisticated. Soon after the confiscation, in an interview with Spanish newspaper El País, and covered by the English language Buenos Aires Herald, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro backed Argentina’s decision to nationalize the country’s biggest oil company YPF saying, “it’s every country’s right.”

Raw power at play and fascinating how the conglomerate still has money moving around, and though dividends for shareholders will be less, the corporation is not collapsing. Again the feeling is Argentina did this because they could. A collapsed Repsol does Argentina no good. Their political responsibility for the country is already against the wall from protectionist trade policies that are turning everyone off from the seeming reams of paperwork required to trade with Argentina in the new rapid fire digital age. Maybe that’s where the Argentine government intends to socially invest a projected YPF windfall. On digital education for the poor who don’t really eat enough to pay attention in school?

Sure there’s rhetoric if asked, but, honestly though, it’s not easy getting everyone a financial taste across a whole country. For example one Argentine difficulty is expressed by this Buenos Aires Herald report of a politician’s attitude toward money. Victory Front’s Senator Aníbal Fernández explaining why his savings are in dollars after the government, including him personally, launched strong restriction policies on dollar purchases, told an audience, when pressed, “I save in dollars because I feel like it.” Meaning he can?

Meanwhile Repsol’s president is cited by the Buenos Aires Herald as “confident that a new Argentine government would negotiate,” and added his “prediction is that within three to four years we will be able to find a solution to this issue.”

There’s just no end to how money can be invested so the message seems Argentina will do business but expect them to take their cut. That expression from the financial collapse, too big to fail rings even truer and louder. What are the odds everyone is able to stay out of each others way? Getting better I guess now that Argentina has a bigger cut of the oil proceeds. Let’s hope.

5/31/2012

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George W. Bush Apology Clock

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The Saga Of Argentina Nationalizing YPF Oil Continues

5/31/2012 concluded: There’s just no end to how money can be invested so the message seems Argentina will do business but expect them to take their cut. That expression from the financial collapse, too big to fail rings even truer and louder. What are the odds everyone is able to stay out of each others way? Getting better I guess now that Argentina has a bigger cut of the oil proceeds. Let’s hope.

April 12 -20, 2016

Right? Money Went That Away

Well. Bueno as Spanish film translates. As far as progress has reached, yesterday's relics remain myths, I sighed, looking up from the April 4, 2016, Buenos Aires Herald headline,

Macri headed up a ceremony at a Fiat factory in Córdoba province
that quotes President Macri saying,

" ... but we are totally concerned about inflation, which is something that hurts all of us, especially those who have the least.”

that The Soapbox View wholeheartedly agrees with. Noble of him to refer to fortune's major surfing flaw resting on infinity's back burner?

Or I was actually looking down, rising from the chair to watch the skies clear for the afternoon rain. Politics as well can all be about happenstance cycles that we've grown accustomed to acknowledging are political wars between all the same people so it just feels as if maybe everything would be solved if they'd* just cut it out.
Economies are very multi multi-multi-dimensional pies. Sliced such that refrigeration's preservative's die, so to speak? Cut the crap. Ending corruption is just a billable hours lawyers' social paradise, so to speak. If nailing down and ending crime from the gut, were really the goal. Lobbyists would and probably could have accomplished that long ago. Because now's supposedly time we'll litigate ourselves successfully through the patterns of revenge and bring justice to whom? Hiding money's a craft. An art form. And only by facing the social contrivances could real resolution solve sound money's problems. And why's Buenos Aires subway system is nearly state-of-the-art while New York's is still the museum showing the brilliance of 19th century technology. A homage to our grinding pursuits?

The black soldiers who biked 2,000 miles over the mountains and out of American history.

Prove legal team isn't an oxymoron?

Thinktank: ‘Just 10% of world military spending could end global poverty.’ Buenos Aires Herald

The ridiculousness is not a myth.

Gaps are where money doesn't flow. A whole district of Buenos Aires was invaded as a "drug" enclave when all the extra machine gun power turned up was grass for which the illegal stigma has no place in civilized society. Nonsense born of bigotry and exploitation. End the Criminal Enterprise System.

CORRUPTION FOR EVERYBODY

The government has announced a battery of bills to combat drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and organized crime

Bodega El Esteco de Cafayate

Paul McCartney Buenos Aires April 19

Argentina

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April 19 Letter Sent to English Language

Buenos Aires Herald ... ?

Dear Buenos Aires Herald, Sebastián Lacunza and Michael Soltys,

Reading the paper Buenos Aires Herald during my eighth two-week yearly visit, I noticed whether to start in on Macri or Christina is the question and, thinking the political dial actually turns this way or that, the dilemma. In the US there's an assumption politically idealistic followers of Uncle Ronny more accurately reflect Aunt Nancy's even-less nuanced trance.

I absolutely love the city's bike lanes design. A short barrier with vehicle parking only on the opposite side of the street. Civilized. Still a long-long way from the once-great and successful Chinese bike-culture destroyed by the mobile-throne's successful façade. "Cough, cough."

But the sidewalks. On the surface the problem is there's no uniformity. Nada, none. What's perhaps tossed off as artistic integrity, is misplaced on such a utilitarian structure as the public sidewalk. What's happening doesn't work. In fact it seems taken for granted that solving the broken walkways is too much work. Just as there's not enough financial profit in solar panels being the reason everyone's not bought one already. Why its also too much effort to focus commercial resources just to fix the broken walks.

Any one-block quarter section of walk is constructed with as much as four and more different varieties of materials that are, generally, NEVER repaired. Isn't there someone of powerful status in the country now who was recently Buenos Aires' mayor? Oversight, Mr. President? Good sidewalks is a tradition the planet deserves. Till Google's picking us up and dropping us anywhere on the map?

After eight yearly two week sliced samplings of Buenos Aires, three small sidewalk repair crews were observed including uno this year. Sites smaller than a small crowd's hands. It is a bad dream. A problem not tackled because of the immense logistical difficulty, when the real reward would reflect that universal crowd control policy "broken windows" because it is just possible all our broken souls need repair?

Where I generally walk I've memorized most problem cracks, holes and crevices. But technically it's not really fair to all the tourists expected to share elsewhere’s money? One reason Florida still doesn't have an income tax. Sidewalk repair is not a quaint problem, but a travesty.

Cut to the chase. Amnesty. That would have to include Argentina's not ever unduly confiscating from people's bank accounts ever again. Cheating taxes? Hiding wealth's worse. Money circulating so high it seldom touches down becoming more incentive to graft and greed. A perpetual cart before exploited horse. Congresses decide and neglect solving opportunity's criminalization. Our strength is weakness is our strength. And society's inability to delve deeper into our real problems, the real problem.

Sincerely,

Charles M. Fraser