Category: international affairs

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budgets & spending cuts international affairs political economy

Was Milei Bailed Out?

Javier Milei, Argentina, bailout, foreign policy

You saw it on the news, newscasters almost gloating: Argentina’s peso plunged — triggered by  low reserves and political defeats for President Javier Milei.

Then the U.S. Treasury under Secretary Scott Bessent finalized a $20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank. This was on top of direct U.S. purchases of pesos in the market and plans for another $20 billion from private sources. The deal was seen as a U.S. strategic play to counter instability in Latin America.

Some called it a bailout.

Were Milei’s radical reforms saved at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Bessant was asked this, yesterday, directly on MSNBC, and had a response: “Do you know what a swap line is?”

I had to brush up on it. (I don’t engage in any cross-currency swaps, understandably, not being a major corporation, a central bank, or a sovereign state.) A currency swap is a financial agreement between two parties to exchange principal amounts and interest payments in different currencies over a set period — a temporary loan in one currency backed by collateral in another, designed to provide liquidity, hedge exchange rate risks, or access cheaper funding without the full risks of outright borrowing.

“In most bailouts you don’t make money,” Bessent said. “The U.S. government made money.”

In an exchange, both parties gain. But in any exchange involving extended spans of time, there is risk, so any initial win for Treasury could be wasted by a failure of Milei’s course.

Unlike American politicians opposing inflation, Milei’s been quite honest with Argentinians: “To cure inflation, you have to go through a recession. There is no way around it.” So why Milei didn’t just peg the Argentine peso directly to the U.S.; why a “crawling peg” rather than strict? Milei has been clear: he lacked political clout.

Milei insists that his crawling peg reform isn’t gradualism (which he despises), and that the swap isn’t a bailout; Bessant agrees, saying the swap’s “a profitable move for America.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Milei’s party gained in the most recent election.

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defense & war international affairs

Strongly Stated Ambiguity

China, Taiwan, strategic ambiguity, war, foreign policy

“Because they know the consequences,” President Donald Trump told Norah O’Donnell on CBS’s 60 Minutes the Sunday before last, after meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea. 

“The Chinese military is encroaching on Taiwan’s sea lanes, its airspace, its cyberspace. I know you have said that Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare move militarily on Taiwan while you’re in office. But what if he does?”asked O’Donnell. 

“Would you order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan?”

Mr. Trump’s reply was ambiguous: “You’ll find out if it happens.” 

Labeled “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. policy regarding a threatened Chinese invasion of Taiwan has long been undeclared, designed to keep China guessing as to our intentions without giving Taiwan a military guarantee.

But then the president added, “And he [Xi Jinping] understands the answer to that.”

The Chinese regime “knows,” Trump explained to O’Donnell, “they understand what’s gonna happen.” He further declared that Xi “has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president.’” 

Mr. Trump’s most surprising disclosure was that Taiwan “never came up” in his two-hour talk with the Chinese ruler, with the president insisting that Xi “never brought it up” “because he understands” “very well” “what will happen.” 

Indeed, military might is the only thing that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party understand. 

As I argued on Around the World With Dane Waters last week, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be economically and strategically catastrophic for Asia and the world. Not to mention, disastrous for freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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general freedom international affairs

La Libertad Avanza

Javier Milei, Argentina, freedom, bail out

“It’s a landslide victory compared to expectations,” Lizzy Burden announced for Bloomberg Television, going on to report that U.S. President Donald Trump has taken some of the credit for the successes, Sunday, of President Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances).

On Truth Social, Trump wrote “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei . . . He’s making us all look good.”

But how does this redound to Trump’s, er, biglyness? 

Well, Trump provided a bailout. 

That’s the term used in the news for a $20 billion currency swap plus $20 billion private loan facility — that is, private funds directed by the negotiating agents at U.S. Treasury. This stabilized Argentina’s peso after a September crisis triggered by Milei’s party’s losses at Buenos Aires polls a month earlier.

Regardless, Liberty Advance’s current win defies recent polls showing a dip to around 40 percent, in part because of hardship from Milei’s “austerity” drive — slashed subsidies, fired public workers, deregulated industries.

It also defied North American expectations. Leading up to October 26, we heard little good news from the land named for the element silver: major U.S. outlets such as the New York Times and NPR, and British media including The Guardian, emphasized Argentina’s dire straits reveling in the “irony” or “failure” of Milei’s “libertarian experiment,” often with a strong whiff of schadenfreude toward “Trump-lite” policies.*

But Milei’s biggest successes should not be ignored: inflation has dropped from 211 percent to under 5 percent monthly. Another factor in his victory is how rural voters, lives improved by freer trade, outweighed disgruntled government workers, newly disemployed.

Mostly, though, I bet Argentines were fearful of a return to Peronism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Of course, Milei’s “shock therapy” and “austerity” (and other leftist bugaboos) were unmatched by anything Trump has done — if anything, Trump’s “Milei Lite.” 

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Quit Banging on Brits

U.K., censorship, free speech, freedom, British, police

We hear so much bad news about censorship coming out of the United Kingdom that it’s almost shocking when something good happens instead.

That good news is a retreat from harassing innocent people for posting online too freely for the taste of British police enforcers.

In the big picture, the change in policy by the Metropolitan Police Service is but a minor tactical withdrawal in the pursuit of a censorship agenda that is otherwise proceeding on all fronts. It’s not so minor for people like, say, comedy writer Graham Linehan.

Several weeks ago, Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport by five armed officers.

“I was arrested at an airport like a terrorist, locked in a cell like a criminal, taken to hospital because the stress nearly killed me, and banned from speaking online.” His sin was posting a few tweets critical of transgender activists.

The charges against Linehan have been dropped. 

And from now on, says the Met, it will stop investigating “non-crime hate incidents.” A spokesperson explains that the commissioner “doesn’t believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates. . . .” 

The “non-crime hate incidents” will still be logged, though.

The policy of harassing Britons for cranky words has been softened before, by the Tories. When Labour came in, the new government promptly hardened things again.

And further caution: Met policy is not government policy. 

So this particular hammer for banging upon speakers daring to offend the easily offendable could come swinging down again at any moment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pigs Not Flying Over England

UK, censorship, free speech, 4CHAN

It can’t govern itself. But the UK, eager to govern the United States, is trying to impose fines on the loose-talk website 4Chan for ignoring British censorship demands.

Preston Byrne, a lawyer representing 4Chan, has responded to UK regulator Ofcom’s attempt to impose the fines — more than $26,000 to start — with instructions to get lost.

Ofcom Enforcement Czar Suzanne Cater says that this fine “sends a clear message that any service which flagrantly fails to engage with Ofcom and their duties under the Online Safety Act can expect to face robust enforcement action.”

How robust, though? 

Byrne: “4chan’s constitutional rights remain completely unaffected by this foreign e-mail. 4chan will obey UK censorship laws when pigs fly. In the meantime, there’s litigation pending in DC. Ofcom hasn’t yet answered. . . .

“That fine will never be enforced in the USA. The UK is welcome to try to enforce it in an American court if they disagree.”

The Trump administration has stressed its opposition to the UK’s global-censorship agenda. So what is going on here? 

It appears that when some people over-zealously seek to dominate others, the weaker they are the more desperate — and in their desperation they become more belligerent. Since the United Kingdom is in no position to launch an invasion of the United States in order to force us . . . well, they might just shut up already. 

Britain’s leadership is in disarray. The country is very weak — a least, unless it teams up with a more powerful country, like China. Which is what the UK indeed seems to be doing. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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China’s Long Reach

China, war, invasion, land, internet

“Is China preparing for war?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked General Tim Haugh last Sunday on 60 Minutes. 

“There was no other reason to target those systems. There’s no advantage to be gained economically. There was no foreign intelligence-collection value,” replied the general. “The only value would be for use in a crisis or a conflict.”

Systems? The segment featured Chinese infiltration into the computer system controlling electricity and the water supply for Littleton, a town of 10,000 residents in Massachusetts.

Littleton’s manager, Nick Lawler, pointed to how disastrous losing control of the computer system could become, noting that with that control an evil force — in this case, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — “can poison the water.”

Literally as well as figuratively.

Once head of the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, Haugh explained that the CCP is “certainly attempting every single day to be able to target telecommunications, to be able to target critical infrastructure.”

Even in little bitty Littleton. Talk about “unrestricted warfare”!

We have known for years that China’s Communists were tyrants; responsible for arguably a hundred million deaths due to murder, torture and starvation; subjugating Tibet; harvesting organs from political prisoners; placing more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps; canceling all political rights in Hong Kong. These totalitarians also threaten to invade Taiwan and lay claim, ridiculously, to 90 percent of the South China Sea . . . which they are policing. 

Then we discovered the Chinese had opened police stations in the United States and other countries to harass and silence Chinese dissidents who had managed to escape to our shores. 

Now, it is hardly a surprise that the CCP has intruded into our electrical grids and water systems, while buying up farmland near American military bases.

Xi Jinping and the Chicoms are far worse than our rivals. While a far starker problem for those living in Asia, we are not safe from the Chinese State. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs privacy

Private Chat, Back Now in Europe?

European Union, EU, Germany, surveillance, censorship, civil liberties

We seem to have Germany — not a typo: Germany — to thank for the fact that one of the most intrusive EU gambits attacking freedom of speech is about to fail.

The proposal would let governments monitor all private chat messages, via mandatory back doors, without bothering with such trivialities as warrants, probable cause, evidence.

The European Union centralizes many assaults on liberty that member countries are supposed to supinely accept once enacted. But it can’t ignore individual members as proposals are still en route to becoming law. And the German government, often not exactly a beacon when it comes to free speech, has now made its opposition to this particular mode of surveillance and censorship loud and clear.

As Germany blocked the plan, first announced in 2022, German Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said that “unprovoked chat control must be taboo in a constitutional state. . . . Germany will not agree to such proposals at EU level.”

Parliamentary leader Jens Spahn of the Christian Democratic Union also uttered some common sense, explaining that warrantless monitoring of chats “would be like opening all letters as a precautionary measure to see if there is anything illegal in them. That is not acceptable, and we will not allow it.”

Although the proposal is not yet quite dead, the German opposition makes it extremely unlikely that EU bosses can go further with it.

Great spirit, German officials. Cheers to now applying this principle consistently — as is required of principles.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs social media

Germany Versus X

The question is freedom of speech. Many German officials are opposed. Twitter-X, or X, is in favor.

As Reclaim the Net summarizes the case, “German prosecutors are testing whether the reach of their censorship laws can outstrip the guardrails of international treaties.”

These prosecutors have been going after three X managers for alleged “obstruction of justice.” This obstruction consisted of refusing to immediately give prosecutors data on users who utter government-disapproved speech.

The X managers have been adhering to the provisions of a bilateral treaty, the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, under which the German requests are to be reviewed in U.S. legal channels before X can be forced to comply. Which increases the chances that X will not be forced to comply.

The prosecutors regard the managers’ refusals as a form of criminal interference. The legal and constitutional issues are now being battled over in German courts.

This is the German government which has been in the news for raiding the homes of people who post sentiments online of which the government disapproves.

That X is not meekly obeying orders to violate the trust of account holders and turn over their private information has upset German advocates of censorship. One MP, Anna Lührmann of the Green Party, says that X’s resistance to censorship is a “scandal” that “goes against fair competition and puts our democracy at risk.”

I don’t think, though, that democracies fail to be robust as they become more like dictatorships. Germany has it all inverted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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With an Exclamation Mark!

German, far right, deaths

Last week, rumors echoed that President Donald Trump had died. Some famous people, such as Minnesota Governor (and future presidential hopeful?) Tim Walz, got “in trouble” for saying things that sounded a little too much like wishing Donald Trump dead.

Trump, of course, was alive and making news on Monday.

But for real death rattles in politics we have to go to Germany.

An election is looming and it appears from news reports that more than a handful of politicians standing for election died suddenly. But it’s not a general curse upon politicians. The deaths have happened in one party, the controversial “far right” party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“Six candidates from Germany’s right-wing AfD Party have died within a 13-day span,” The Daily Wire reports. “As local elections approach, officials say that at least two deaths have been confirmed to be the result of natural causes and that no foul play is currently suspected.”

The two designated natural deaths occurred within the same state, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Two candidate deaths in the same party in the same political region leading up to the same election day has to raise eyebrows. A fluke?

It turns out that the other four suspiciously dead candidates hailed from the same region, and the authorities still suspect nothing. 

“Despite the police ruling out suspicious circumstances, retired economist Stefan Homburg claimed in a post on X that the number of candidates’ deaths was ‘statistically almost impossible,’” the U.S. edition of The Independent informs us. “His post was later retweeted by the AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, while AfD supporter and billionaire Elon Musk responded to the tweet with an exclamation mark.”

Rumors about this won’t die as quickly as the Trump rumors last weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture international affairs

Iranian Revolutionary Climate

Iran, protests, climate change

I was once bitterly opposed to the climate change. One minute raining, then snowing, then desert sun. Enough already.

But now I see that we need the climate change to fight tyranny.

Not everyone agrees. Nina Bookout simply refuses to accept the latest super-sophisticated scientific reasoning about how widespread protests happening in Iran — ostensibly because of a theocracy that is stomping everybody — are secretly being motivated by the climate change!!!!!

You know it’s scientific if it’s in “Scientific” American, a lot smarter now that it has dumbed down its content in recent decades. 

But Bookout just won’t follow the “science.”

Scientific American says climate change is “among the environmental challenges facing Iran that helped spark protests in dozens of cities. . . . A severe drought, mismanaged water resources and dust storms diminished Iran’s economy in recent years.” 

Protests are happening most in places with “climate refugees.”

Bookout differs: “The Iranian people KNOW that billions of dollars was freighted to Iran on Obama’s say-so. Thus, for several years, the Iranian government has had financial resources available to help those impacted by the drought and the earthquakes. . . . Instead the Iranian government [have been using] their cash . . . to prop up Hamas, Hezbollah, terrorism in Syria, and build up their military. . . . The security forces aren’t attacking protestors because of climate change.”

I’m with Scientific American. Let us have climate change wherever autocrats oppress the people, so that people will resist this oppression.

Thank you for your help, climate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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