Published Saturday, January 19, 2013 By Arlean. Under Argentina +Edit Post

 

mercadocentral

Today we are going to visit the Mercado Central (Central Market)–Buenos Aires wholesale food market–with Dr. Christian Rubilar, one of our much-appreciated immigration attorneys in Buenos Aires, who so graciously provided the photos and introduced us to Mercado Central. This will be our first visit to the market. We invite you to join us!

Since we always like to go back into the history of this beautiful city, we did a little research on the Mercado Central. It was first established in Buenos Aires in 1893 as the central wholesale market for the area. As Buenos Aires grew in population, the market grew as well. Finally, it completely outgrew its space and, in 1984, was moved to a location outside the city.
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NEWS THIS WEEK

Costa Rica

Reuters reported this week that Costa Rica is considering currency controls. Although we do not report on Costa Rica, as a rule, we do think it worth mentioning that yet another country is struggling with currency issues. It appears that Costa Rica’s problem stems from their interest rate of over 9%, while developed countries were lowering interest rate–some to what amounts to a negative rate. As a result, investors have been investing in Costa Rica’s currency. Now Costa Rica is concerned that the demand on Costa Rica’s currency by investors will push the value of their currency so high that it interferes with exports, thus threatening Costa Rica’s economy. .
More and more it makes sense that early U.S. pioneers, in their founding documents, made gold and silver the only legal currency. Gold and silver have been real money throughout history. When currency must, by law, be based on real value, it keeps the reins on government spending and keeps bankers and politicians more honest. But bankers and politicians promised that if the people would allow them to go off the gold standard to fiat currency, there would never be another depression because they “knew how to keep that from happening.”  We’ll find out.

Argentina

The official exchange rate at the Central Bank is currently 4.946 pesos to the dollar. Blue Dollar (technically illegal, which seems to have little effect) still around $7.49.  This is very hard for the Argentines who are living on the Argentina economy. Although we seldom go downtown, we hear of repeated demonstrations in the downtown area, making it very difficult and time-consuming to navigate through the area because the demonstrations interfere with traffic. Of course the government offices are in that area. In our neighborhood, life appears to go on as usual. The only change we have seen is that three apartments–that we know of–are now available in our building. Two are for rent; one is for sale. There is also a vacant apartment across the sreet. This many apartments available all at once may just be a quirk–but then again, maybe not.
Saber-rattling continues over the Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands. We don’t pretend to predict events, but we don’t expect anything to come of it. We think it is a diversion tactic to draw attention to something other than the foundering Argentina economy. .

Uruguay

About one-third of the gynecologists in Uruguay are refusing to honor the new law, barely passed by the Uruguay legislature, legalizing abortion in the early weeks. A similar law was narrowly passed by the legislature in 2008 but oncologist and then-President Vasquez vetoed it. Current President Mujica, a former Uruguayan communist guerilla fighter (who claims that he has changed now), has promoted legalizing abortion in Uruguay. However, says doctor Maria Lujan Chiesa, who is among the group that has sent a petition to the government, “We get trained at university to cure people and save lives and we know very well that abortion is murder. Pregnancy is never an illness.” The Buenos Aires Herald reports that the only other countries in Latin America where women can abort during normal pregnancies are Communist-ruled Cuba and former British colony Guyana.

Offshore Finance

Did you know that you can hold foreign rental real estate in your U.S. IRA? We thought we’d mention it since we have discovered that a lot of people don’t know that. Although our strategy has been to remove all money from these retirement plans (gradually over several years so as not to trigger high taxes), we realize there are those who choose to keep them. There are some stipulations for buying real estate in an IRA. First, you can’t live in it yourself nor put members of your family in it. So it would need to be investment/rental real estate. You would also need to set up an LLC or corporation through which to hold the real estate, and the business structure held in your IRA. You would need legal advice..But it is one way to maintain the IRA or 401K while diversifying your retirement into more than one country.

Facebook

If you’d like to be involved in discussion, post questions and/or comments, we suggest that you join us on Facebook at FourFlagsJournal.com. We thought we’d see how that works if you are interested.  Of course you may also comment on the web site on any of our posted articles or send us an email if you need information.
See  you again next week . . .  .

Arlean
www.FourFlagsJournal.com