Transcript

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.