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Peak Stupidity: Argentina Fines Walmart For Violating "Fair Price" Pact, Urges Citizens To Denounce "Evil" Retailers
We take certain liberties with this title: we realize that since one is dealing with human individuals, particularly human individuals stuck in an insolvent, soon to re-default nation, stupidity can never peak per se, as the next day will without doubt bring some peak-er instance of even more profound idiocy. However, at this particular moment, this may be it.
What happened is that on Friday, Argentina fined supermarket chains including Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, and Carrefour for "failing to maintain adequate stocks of price-controlled goods." This happened after the country shocked everyone in late January by devaluing the peso by 18 percent, effectively wiping out the purchasing power of its population by the same amount and forcing a mad scramble by the population into retail outlets, such as Wal-Mart, where the people were desperate to convert their increasingly more worthless pieces of paper for tangible goods resulting in a "run on the Wal-Mart" and depleting store shelves of virtually all goods, price-controlled or otherwise.
Also, in a press conference on Friday, trade secretary Augusto Costa said that the government has opened 141 investigations from consumer complaints on pricing and shortage issues that would violate "fair price" agreement signed with state since Jan. 27.
In other words, it is not the government's fault that it has unleashed soaring inflation courtesy of yet another major currency devaluation, and in addition, quietly admitting several days later that it had been lying all along about its soaring rate of inflation over the past decade in order to keep the popular mood jovial (even though said population had every clue just what the true inflation rate of goods and services in Argentina was... the same as in the US).
No: it was Wal-Mart's grave error for not stockpiling enough key products which the population would scramble to procure upon this (and all future) instance of currency devaluation.
And so it must be punished. From Bloomberg:
Carrefour will be fined 1.3 million pesos ($166,462) and Wal-Mart was ordered to pay 604,000 pesos for violations detected through complaints by consumers, Trade Secretary Augusto Costa said at a news conference today in Buenos Aires. The other companies were Chilean retailer Cencosud SA’s local unit, Vea, Spanish supermarket chain Dia SA and local companies Coto and Chango Mas.
“The goal isn’t to hand out fines, it’s to comply with the price agreement on 194 basic goods,” Costa said. “But if there are violations we’ll continue to implement the law.”
Actually, the goal is to hand out fines, considering the "law" is about the dumbest thing one could conceive. And remember: price controls in insolvent socialist paradises always work (at this point Venezuela now, and soon France, and the US are free to chime in):
The Argentine government has moved to control price increases after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner let the peso tumble the most since 2002 in January to stem a fall in international reserves and make the South American nation’s exports more competitive. Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent in January from a month earlier, the government said in its first measure of a national inflation index. That would be the highest monthly figure in more than a decade, based on the Greater Buenos Aires index, which was the previous gauge.
You mean to say that when inflation is "suddenly" revealed to be borderline flirting with the "hyper-" prefix, that people will rush to empty out one and all retailers of whatever goods are in inventory? Unpossible.
But while all of the above in itself is certainly grounds for today's instance of "peak stupidity", what really takes the cake is the following:
Fernandez has called on Argentines to use consumer hotlines to denounce retailers that charge excessive prices or fail to properly stock shelves.
At this point it is unclear who is spinning faster in their grave: Lenin, Goebbels or Joe McCarthy.
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Yay fascism and price controls!
John F. Kennedy? You mean that old rum runner's -er, I mean, that war profiteer and insider trader Joe's son?
John would have learned all about fixing the price of steel from papa Joe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.
"...gangster Frank Costello claimed to an author/collaborator that he had been associated with Kennedy in bootlegging during Prohibition.[11] To this day, as Kennedy's most recent and most thorough biographer David Nasaw asserts, no credible evidence has ever been found that links Joseph Kennedy to any illegal bootlegging activities.
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Kennedy embarked on a career in finance, making a large fortune as a stock market and commodity investor and by investing in real estate and a wide range of industries.[1] During World War I, he was an assistant general manager of a Boston area Bethlehem Steel shipyard, through which he developed a friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
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In 1919, Kennedy joined the prominent stock brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. where he became an expert in dealing in the unregulated stock marketof the day, engaging in tactics that were later labeled insider trading and market manipulation."
http://www.sechistorical.org/museum/galleries/kennedy/lastDays_c.php
Here is a more accurate story. Give that to his legacy in the least.
... for which he go some lead.
Peak stupidity assumes a lot and contradicts no less an authority than Albert Einstein who was quoted as saying
"Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe."
Kinda hard to be on Walmart's side, what with them flooding my country with zillion$ in Chinese crap and destroying what was left of every small downtown in the country.
As tempting as your feelings are, and are probably felt by many of us, the socialist Argentine gov't's behavior is worse. It's worse because there is no way to know what the gov't will pull next.
It's a stick up, pure theft.
Walmart has committed its own forms of theft time and time again. They rape their independent vendors. So yeah, I feel ya. It couldn't happen to a nicer company...unless it were Monsanto.
Shorter Kelly: " Yeah, taking trillions and trillions of middle class wealth and funneling that money upwards is a little tawdry, but it's nothing compared to some government handing out EBT cards or establishing price controls."
It's a stick-up, all right.
It's called tax, and all governments do it.
Pray explain the difference.....
A guy comes over to you with a knife and says 'give me your money'
A guy comes over to you and says 'give me your money or I'll take everything you've worked for and stick you in a cage'
The big difference is that the latter forces you to tell him how much you have (with the threat of the same cage), the former only takes what's in your wallet at the time.
Who's the bigger crook?
The key word is "fine." They wish to profit off of the distortions that their own malfeasance has created.
"Guillotine a pol or crat, save a country. Guillotine a bankster, save the world."
1- When a leftist narcissist is in charge, the results can be jaw droppingly stupid and harmful at the same time. It's always someone else's fault of course whenever the narcissist creates a problem.
2- Anyone who thinks it can't get much worse here in the US if we just let Obama complete his term, let this example with Walmart open your eyes. It can get worse - MUCH WORSE! Crap, as ZH says, tomorrow will likely bring something else that will be worse in Argentina - and HERE.
There is no limit to how bad our WH narcissist will make it. Today is worse than 5 years ago. Next month will be far worse than today.
Hear, hear! You ain't justa sh-ttin. Now , lets go play golf.
So you are going to play the political tribal bullshit game and pretend you're intelligent. It's idiots like you why our economic condition continues into the abyss.
Obama out raised McCain on Wall Street 2:1 and among health insurance companies 3:1 and you throw around some leftist bullshit. Those private entities received $23 trillion (our money) and millions of new customers respectively since 2008.
I'm tired of clowns like you arguing for the same exact nightmare we are already in.
it would make no difference if the right ran things-the middle class and poor are screwed by either head of the same beast
Can it get more obvious that government, regardless of left or right leaning, is "always" the problem?
Hey WallMart time for a Buy One get the Second One at Twice the Price Sale...
It's pretty pathetic and typical of the ineptness of Argentine politicians. Still, they can always turn to 'the Great Malvinas Myth' to divert attention.
And these same sociopaths have designs to run the entire planet?
No wonder they want to establish "manageable" population levels.
i recall soon after soviet union collapse we had shops which were selling goods only for USD and not local currency
probably the same awaits Argentina
Yea Argentina! Do it again, harder, harder. Doesn't matter what you choose as an excuse. Just hurt them! Kick 'em when they're up, kick 'em when their down, repeat.
Corporations Have No Feelings. They are not alive. They are the undead. The Beast.
I'd like to pound
Cristina Fernández de Kirchnerass raw.
I'd also like to see her and Hillary in a lesbian scene. They could fight over the strapon.
Walmart, "Argentina, you can have your fine and eat it too. We're out of here."
I stopped going to Wal-Mart in 2005, nothing but junk there.
I still remember when everything in the store was either made or assembled in the U.S.A.
They should shut down their stores there, just to fuck with the govt.
When the founder, Sam Walton, was alive and in control Walmart was a fine organization and considered a model employer. He died and his bloodsucking relatives promptly turned the business into a profit whore. It is now the GS of retail. Which is definitely not a compliment.
I can't believe Wal-Mart is even still in Argentina, do they really think they can make money is such a fucked up market? My guess is, they won't be for long. I got news for Argentina, Wal-Mart doesn't need you.
It would be tough to manage a WalMart in high inflationary times...a pricing nightmare....let alone restocking....your quarterly reports would be all screwed up....
The people remember..it was only 10 years ago they went thru this crap..so back to the old survival ways
Who is John Galt?
Nice day in buenos Aires, partly cloudy and 75, will warm up to 80 in the afternoon. At least it's stopped raining!
Ok Walmart was fined a couple hundred thousand US. Carrefour a little more. They can both afford it, just makes nice political theater for La Presidenta, rather like fining JPM a few billion.
Shelves are full with nice healthy food at my local Carrefour, yes it takes about 20 minutes at the checkout stand if you shop at the wrong time of day, all part of the rich tapestry that is Argentina.
Why, I wonder, does ZH care about a few hundrd thousaand of fines?
Will we ever have an intelligent and balanced posting about Argentina?
walmart is bad for the environment, bad for society. kill the waltons.
Feature this:
Wal-Mart seeks $100,000 tax cut from Rockland, eyes statewide reductionshttp://bangordailynews.com/2014/02/16/news/midcoast/wal-mart-seeks-10000...
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Here are some facts:
Wal-Mart in Maine
At least 3 Wal-Mart locations have received subsidies worth about $22.2 million in Maine.
We found no instances of property tax assessment challenges by Wal-Mart in Maine, but given the absence of centralized data, it is still possible that appeals have occurred.
Wal-Mart was found to have more workers than any other employer in the state relying on publicly-funded health insurance. This shows how taxpayers end up subsidizing Wal-Mart’s policy of providing low wages and inadequate benefits.
For more information, see the Maine page of Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch.http://www.walmartsubsidywatch...
But don't the taxpayers get it all back from everyday low prices?
lol.....sure... "Your tax Dollars at work"
I expect we'll see Argentina-peak-stupidity-price-controls in America fairly soon, even after Nixon's failed attempt, because gosh that was 40 yrs ago, things were different back then, it would work now.
Nixon, a supposedly conservative Republican, refused to acknowledge falling value of the US dollar after he closed the gold window, and it was dropping fast. He refused to acknowledge falling USD value as the cause of rising prices. Trying instead to control prices, treating the effect rather than the cause.
No politician will acknowledge falling currency value. None. Regardless of party. Regardless of economic and monetary persuasion. If Ron Paul was president, he wouldn't acknowledge it. If Mises himself was president, he wouldn't acknowledge it.
Because bankers, the real powers behind the throne, won't let it be acknowledged. Not once has Bernanke acknowledged any drop in USD value since he slammed the pressed into high gear in 2008, yet USD has lost over 50% value since 2008. And yes I mean dropping from 4 cents of 1913 value to 2 cents of 1913 value. Maybe 1.5 cents now.
So yea, we'll see peak-stupidity-price-controls again here. Trying to treat the effect, because they won't acknowledge the cause, and certainly won't do anything to fix the cause.
And btw, I think we're seeing reverse price controls on bitcoin now, defacto capital controls in other words, with exchanges not letting people cash out.
It will fail too of course.
We're five years into a very predictable end-game looting spree that will destory the US dollar. We know exactly what wlll happen, what the outcome will be.
Timing is the only variable.
Can you elaborate? ..."We know exactly what wlll happen, what the outcome will be." Danke.
Upon further reflection, I realize that my call for Kirchner's head on a spit was wrong.
Putting her head on a spit would allow rot to set in, and the trophy would be gone in a month...useless at that point.
Instead, her head should be embalmed and encased in clear lucite. This block should then be set into the stone on one side of the gate to the presidential residence, to be a visible reminder for both the people and politicians for all time.
Kind of like Lenin's tomb, but only using her head.
Alternatively, I would accept a proposal to create a presidential throne of skulls. A chair that all succeeding presidents must sit in as they are sworn in, consisting of Kirchner's and her crony's polished craniums.
Fuck Argentina's government and fuck Wal-Mart
This is all "blame game" subterfuge. They are ON the same fucking team, for Christ's sake.
Wal-mart annual sales 443.8 billion
Argentina's GDP 474 billion
Wal-Mart has 24 stores in Argentina
LoL!