Episode Summary
In this episode of The Expat Files, Johnny Mueller explores a range of topics that provide insight into life in Latin America for expats. He begins by discussing the state of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the region, noting that small and medium-sized farmers are largely unaware of GMOs, and the majority of the local food supply is not genetically modified. He contrasts this with the United States, where a significant percentage of corn crops and pre-packaged foods are genetically modified, making consumers potential 'guinea pigs' for companies like Monsanto. Johnny emphasizes the benefits of living in Latin America for expats, including access to locally grown, nearly organic food at a fraction of the cost compared to the first world.
Next, Johnny turns his attention to the availability of first-world goods in Latin America, particularly highlighting Argentina's economic issues. He mentions that while prepackaged junk food and GMO products are available, they are not commonly found in outdoor markets. He warns against moving to certain Latin American countries, including Argentina, due to high costs and economic instability. Johnny criticizes the government's currency controls and the resulting issues with currency exchange taxes, noting that the government's attempts to regulate the system have led to widespread evasion and a lack of enforcement. He concludes by emphasizing Argentina's financial instability and its history of economic turmoil, suggesting that the country's current situation is not as stable as it appears.
In the following segment, Johnny discusses the economic and psychological landscape of Argentina, highlighting the government's use of currency controls to prevent capital flight, which has led to economic stagnation and a negative capital outflow. He notes that Argentina's debt rating has been downgraded to a junk bond rating, placing it in the same category as countries like Pakistan and Cuba. Johnny contrasts Argentina's situation with the first world, suggesting that the country's psychological state is also problematic, with a high number of psychiatrists and psychotropic drug prescriptions per capita. He attributes this to a complex mix of inferiority and superiority complexes, as well as a misperception of Argentina as a first-world country despite its economic struggles.
Johnny then shifts focus to the complex relationship between the number of psychiatrists and the level of happiness in a society, questioning whether more psychiatrists lead to more happiness or if unhappiness leads to more psychiatrists. He discusses the lag in adopting terms like 'bully' in Latin America and the lack of school psychologists in public schools, contrasting this with the United States. Johnny highlights the affordability of clinical psychology services in private settings in Latin America, with sessions costing as little as $10, compared to much higher costs in the United States. He also touches on the challenges expats face with family members coming to visit, especially younger relatives who may feel entitled to a lifestyle they cannot afford in their home countries.
Finally, Johnny discusses the lifestyle of expats in Latin America, noting that many keep a low profile to avoid attention. He shares an anecdote about Lester, who reflects on the childhood of kids in San Salvador, describing how they played outdoors and had a more active lifestyle compared to American children. Johnny contrasts this with the current situation, where many Latin American kids are not overweight due to their active lifestyles, but he also notes that as they grow older and earn money, they tend to adopt less healthy habits, similar to those in the United States. He then transitions into a discussion about the movie 'Total Recall,' where he points out a strange detail: the $50 bill in the film features the face of Barack Obama, which he interprets as either a form of flattery or a subtle criticism of the U.S. political climate. He concludes by inviting listeners to email him with questions about Latin America.
Topics
GMOs in Latin America, Comparison between Latin America and the U.S. in terms of GMO usage, Benefits of expat life in Latin America, Local farming practices and food supply, Legal and cultural differences in transportation and food consumption, Availability of first-world goods in Latin America, Economic instability in Argentina, Currency controls and their impact, Political instability in Argentina, Economic policy, Debt rating, Psychological state of Argentina and its economic struggles
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:35 GMOs in Latin America and the U.S. Comparison 00:03:47 GMO Corn Statistics in North America 00:05:05 GMOs and the Cost of Organic Food 00:06:06 Availability of First-World Goods in Latin America 00:06:48 Warning Against Moving to Argentina 00:11:26 Political Instability in Argentina 00:11:57 Currency Controls and Economic Panic 00:12:51 Argentina's Debt Rating Downgrade 00:15:31 Argentina's High Psychiatrist Population 00:18:07 Psychiatrists and Happiness Correlation 00:18:37 The Rise of 'Bully' in Latin America 00:19:28 School Counselors in the United States 00:20:20 Lack of School Psychologists in Latin America 00:21:29 Affordable Clinical Psychology Services in Latin America 00:23:30 Expats and Family Members Coming to Visit 00:23:48 Expats and Privacy Concerns 00:23:50 Keeping a Low Profile 00:23:55 Lester's Observations on Latin American Youth 00:24:02 Nostalgia for a Simpler Past 00:24:08 The Active Lifestyle of Latin American Kids 00:24:15 Outdoor Play and Physical Activity 00:24:21 Contrast with Modern American Childhood 00:24:27 Reflection on Past Experiences
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder My thoughts ever straight Hi everybody I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files Living in Latin America the show that tells you what it's really like to live work play and or retire in Latin America I tell it just like it is so let's get started In a recent show I was talking about GMO foods genetically modified foods and what's been happening with the state of GMOs down here in Latin America And I did mention if you happen to shop at any of the local food and produce markets
[00:46] You don't have to worry a bit about being a guinea pig for Monsanto You know down here small and medium-sized farmers have not even heard of GMO yet In fact when you ask them about GMOs, they don't even know what the hell you're talking about You've got to explain it to them and that's when you get that deer in the headlights look Get used to it down here us expats get that blank look out of the locals a lot Believe me the common folks just don't get why we do such stupid things like GMO, you know Anyway, you've heard me talk about lag time before down here in Latin America. Well when it comes to GMOs Thank God for lag time. We'll live longer for it. That's for sure I mean the average farmer down here has a very small operation between 5 and 25 acres
[01:31] The fact is these guys don't even have tractors or any kind of motorized equipment at all and 80% of these guys do not Irrigate at all even if they wanted to they couldn't afford the gear or the pumps or the gas to run the pumps and what'll strike you funny when you go to one of these big produce markets is Seeing these guys coming in from their farms really early in the morning before the market opens when they set their little produce Stands up. That's when you see virtually hundreds of rickety old pickup trucks 90% of them wouldn't be road worthy up in the first world, but nobody's looking down here These things are so overloaded and bottoming out on their Springs Just loaded down with mangoes or pineapples or onions or tomatoes and you just wonder how they make the trip day in and day out
[02:17] But they do and of course, it's not just food that they haul They always have two or three kids on top hit you in a ride into town and in the first world That would be a $200 fine, you know hauling someone in the back of your pickup But down here it just might be illegal, but no one knows for sure and no one's paying attention Anyway, though I have to say in three countries I know for sure Costa Rica Chile and Argentina You'll get a $20 fine per person if you haul someone in the back of your pickup all in an effort to be first world Of course though those $20 fines usually go directly into the pockets of the cops Kind of a Christmas bonus if you know what I mean Anyway, like I said, it's a real sight seeing these guys hauling their produce in the morning from the farm to the market It's a scene right out of an old 1940s Warner Brothers movie back in the States
[03:05] And you expect these guys to suddenly just switch over to GMOs. I don't think so not in my lifetime Anyway, the big guys. Yes, the big corporate industrial farmers with case tractors and thousands of acres Yeah, they'll do it. But those guys are the big exporters. They don't sell much at all in the interior of their country It's the little guys that supply 80 to 90 percent of what's locally eaten by the likes of you and me So that's real good news for us expats for sure But always with good news comes some bad news now Here's an amazing statistic up in the first world according to the US Department of Agriculture Research and Data Service in the year 2011 last year 96% of all corn crops in North America were genetically modified
[03:53] That's both yellow and white corn and the only corn that's not genetically modified get this Popcorn so go ahead and knock yourself out with the jiffy pop on second thought get an air popper and hit it with Some extra virgin olive oil instead of butter So that means virtually 100% of all the standard corn items that you eat are genetically modified I mean all of the corn you listeners up in the States are eating not what us expats down here eat And that includes nearly all of the animal feed to and dog food, etc Anything that contains corn or anything derived from corn like that slow-acting poison high fructose corn syrup Which seems to be in every possible packaged food available these days. Just read the labels and you'll see anyway
[04:41] That's news that should clog up your intestines without any help from the corn syrup, and this will make you cringe, too 85% of all pre-packaged food in grocery stores up in the States Contains some kind of GMO product, too And what does that mean that means all you expat wannabes up there and everyone else you really are guinea pigs for Monsanto Unless of course you buy zero pre-packaged foods in the grocery store and buy all organic Which isn't easy at all if you're on a budget if you don't have your own garden to grow organics yourself Which by the way is almost impossible for any city dweller Then you're gonna pay two or three times as much for any store-bought foods that are certified organic That's just the price you have to pay when you live up north
[05:29] So now you can add that to the long list of reasons why it's a very good idea to get your bags packed And move down here to Latin America preferably in the Alti Plano and off the tourist trail So here's what you have to remember about that locally grown food Sold at the produce markets down here even though it's as close to organic as you're gonna get without being actually Labeled certified organic you're still gonna pay a quarter to a fifth of what you'd pay for GMO produce up in the first world you get what I'm saying now, don't you? But remember if you go to one of the first world style food stores down here like Walmart or some of the other big chains We'll be able to buy all that prepackaged junk that you get up in the first world, too So if you're down here You can still get yourself a healthy dose of GMO foods and as much high fructose corn syrup as you want
[06:18] All you have to do is buy prepackaged stuff like you do up in the States So it's not as if GMO stuff hasn't hit down here it has but not in the big outdoor produce markets Now, you know, there's four or five Latin American countries that I don't recommend to move to as an expat They're alright to visit of course, but you really wouldn't want to live there generally because they're either loaded with gringos and therefore first world expensive Or they're on the fast trek to becoming first world in ways us expats Just can't stomach and Argentina is one of those countries I don't recommend and not just because it's first world expensive one thing you have to realize about Argentina If you want the full effect of the gringo advantage, you're not gonna get it there And now that they've slapped strict monetary controls on the US dollar
[07:06] In fact, they've slapped a big surcharge or tax anytime you change the Argentine peso to a foreign currency Like the dollar or the euro since they've started with that big brother crap I can't really say too many good things about Argentina at all And I know a lot of these big newsletter writers like Doug Casey and such are setting up big Farming and real estate projects in Argentina. Well, all I've got to say is good luck I'd like to hear how rosy it is over there in about two or three years Because you know unless they bought off the politicians in that little development they've got in the boonies Which of course is always a possibility in Latin America, you know based on what the government's doing there right now They're likely to find it's not the free-spirited inexpensive utopian getaway
[07:53] They thought it was but of course Doug Casey and his friends all have real money So maybe they've figured all that into the equation already. Who knows? All I know is it's way too expensive from my tastes Now as for Argentine residents, they don't like what's happening one bit either In fact lately I was talking to one of my buddies who lives in Argentina He told me that astute Argentine businessmen and people in the middle to upper classes have figured out certain angles in ways Not to pay that surcharge when switching their currency into foreign currency like dollars or euros They've been skirting it because they found a certain loophole It seems the government put an exemption on the currency conversion surcharge your tax if you were changing your money over to a first world currency and using it to travel outside of the country on
[08:40] A business or vacation because obviously if you were traveling, let's say to New York You'd have to switch pesos to dollars before you ever got there because when you land in New York as soon as you get to The airport you got to start using dollars They won't take pesos not even for a coffee or a stick of bubblegum So the Argentine government wisely exempted monies that you exchanged for a first world currency when you're gonna travel But human nature being as it is That universal hatred of paying taxes and using all means necessary to avoid forking your hard-earned money over to the government What happened was as soon as the Argentine government announced that currency exemption when used for travel suddenly within two weeks there was a 500% increase in people going to the bank and to travel agencies and applying for the currency exchange tax
[09:30] exemption everyone saying they were gonna use that money to go away on a trip and the Argentine government being basically third world had no way of checking up if the people who applied for the exemption actually went on a Trip or not and of course the Argentine people knew there was basically no way they were gonna get caught And now the government has egg on its face. They've announced that they're gonna investigate these cases and They've proposed huge fines in prison terms for people who manipulate the system that way now I ask you is this a country you want to live in and you know every time I hear anyone defend Argentina usually first worlders who've never been there or have only been on vacation to Buenos Aires for a few weeks with them It's like a broken record they're always impressed as to how European and educated the Argentinos are and how beautiful and old world when it's always really is and
[10:23] As you walk around Buenos Aires, you never think that the country's on the verge of another financial collapse But then again, no one thought that would happen in Spain Portugal Ireland or Greece either down Did they now we know Argentina is a basket case financially? It always has been though when you're there, it's easy to be fooled by appearances They put on a good show, you know and lately at least they've been putting on a good show Politically to rushing to be a first-world style big brother state, but here's a little fact I'm sure you didn't know in 2001 which wasn't so long ago Really when Argentina's banking system collapsed completely and half of all the liquid assets were drained out of the banks and fled Into the safety of other currencies in other countries That's when Argentina's version of big brother clamped down hard and heavy in the form of currency controls
[11:13] Where if you had a US dollar account in a bank, they only allowed you to take 100 bucks a month out Anyway back in 2001. Did you know that the political and financial system in Argentina was so unstable and precarious that they went through five presidents in two weeks Let me repeat that they had five different presidents of the country in two weeks Unbelievable, but true go ahead and look it up It's nothing to be proud of but it's one way to get into the Guinness Book of Records now, isn't it? Now if you are any kind of student of economics You know that when a country's teetering financially and ready to collapse or when it's on the verge of defaulting or devaluing its currency One of the very first things that they do in a panic is to slap on currency controls
[12:02] And that's in an effort to keep the liquid wealth from fleeing the country Though a move like that always causes even more panic not to mention much anxiety and nervousness in the business sector And there's no better way in the world to keep foreign investors away than to slap on currency controls But then again, that's exactly what Argentina has been doing in the last few months And naturally foreigners who have may have thought of investing in Argentina are suspicious and wondering what's going on there now How the latest currency controls are affecting the Argentine economy. Well, according to the government's own economic statistics The industry of economic activity for the past June and July stood at exactly a zero percent growth rate with an accompanying negative outflow of capital and reserves and worse yet just this week the international financial rating agency
[12:51] Standard and poor just reduced Argentina's debt rating from a B to a B minus That's actually a junk bond rating Did you know that now for a country that thinks of itself as a first world island and a sea of third world chaos? That's a pretty pathetic rating especially since it's the same rating Pakistan has and this will shock you out of all 20 Latin American countries The only country that's got a worse rating is guess who? Cuba in fact Cuba doesn't have a standard and poor rating because their currency isn't convertible and they don't float debt bonds because there's no international market for them So bottom line statistically speaking Argentina is on the road to another financial blowout but so is the first world to which puts them in good company and
[13:39] Here's some news about Argentina that I'm sure is gonna surprise you when I heard it. It shocked me, too Now when you think of psychotherapy you think of the first world automatically, don't you you think of the Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and that poster child for failed psychotherapy What are yelling right and when you think of psychotherapy you think of big first world cities like New York Chicago and LA where a good percentage of the population are on prescribed psychotropic drugs like Zoloft and Paxil and kids with their Ritalin concerta and Adderall and as you might imagine and I've mentioned before on my show Latin America has so Few psychologists and psychiatrists that even expats like me and my friends practically never run into anyone
[14:24] Who's taking a medication like that and though us expats get around none of us seem to ever run into a psychiatrist or a psychologist either like expat Eddie says any country where there's no big brother lawyers don't advertise and people don't go to shrinks now That's an expat paradise. In fact in my 21 years down here I've only once run into a psychiatric professional myself a Psychologist and guess what she had so little work in her own field that I hired her for one of my Latin American Seminars as an English translator and she took the job because she was dying of boredom And you know, I've never met a Latin kid on a psychotropic drug like Ritalin either Even though up in the first world USA and upwards of 20% of all grade school and high school kids are on some kind of medicine
[15:13] Like that god, what a screwed-up world, huh? Anyway after mentioning all this and the amazing lack of psychiatrists and psychobabble down here I have to sadly report that there is one country in Latin America that breaks all records when it comes to psychiatrists psychiatric care and Psychotropic prescription drug numbers. You'll never guess which country has the most Psychiatrists per capita in the whole world go ahead and ask this question at a party and make a bet on it You'll win every time. In fact, this country has 15 psychotherapists per thousand persons the highest percentage in the world And that over medicated totally psychologically screwed-up place is ding ding Argentina anyway, they're official statistics show Argentina has world-class numbers of manic depressives neurotic
[16:05] Psychotics and vast numbers of people with all the other catalog mental conditions you can find in the diagnostic and Statistical manual of mental disorders. That's the DSM for short And why wouldn't Argentina be all psychologically screwed up since every business school and government agency has at least one shrink on staff They've got to find in catalog mental disorders or they wouldn't have a job, right? And how Argentina ended up with the world's greatest concentration of psychiatrists and psychotherapists Nobody seems to know but my friend from Argentina tells me he says he thinks it's because Argentine people are way over educated in the liberal arts and Vastly under educated in the hard sciences and the country's population has talked itself into the idea that it's really a first world island
[16:54] Stuck smack dab in the middle of the third world and they don't like those third world stereotypes and cultured Argentina's suffer for that and the lack of International respect they get for being third world like my Argentine friend says it's all very complicated So going to shrinks is a national past time Like my friend says in the face of Europe, they have a huge inferiority complex But in the face of other Latinos from other Latin countries, they have a chip on their shoulder a huge superiority complex They absolutely believe they're much more superior to any other country in Latin America Expat Eddie's got it right when he says it's kind of like how New Yorkers feel about the rest of the states Everyone else is just a hayseed from Nebraska. But in the case of New Yorkers, they're right
[17:43] And if you remember in my past show I talked about those worldwide happiness polls where Nicaragua Guatemala and Honduras very poor Latin countries show up in the top ten Consistently, but that's not true for Argentina They're almost always in the cellar and there's something about those happiness polls It seems like a country's ranking is inversely proportional to the amount of psychiatric professionals They have per capita the more psychiatrists the less happiness So what came first the chicken or the egg? Are there more psychiatrists when there's more unhappiness or are people unhappier when there's more psychiatrists? You tell me so is Argentina really a good place to move to? Well, go ahead be my guess. Well, Argentina is quite a place
[18:29] All right, but it's like the old saying it's a nice place to visit But I wouldn't want to live there and speaking of psychiatric treatment and clinical psychology It seems like the latest and the greatest fad and craze in Latin America in that respect is the advent of the bully Yes, the bully until about two or three years ago. There was no such thing as a word bully in Spanish In fact, there is no Spanish word for it. They use the English word bully or bullying So as usual it did take a couple of years of lag time before that bullying issue got on the radar down here, too And you might ask what kind of progress our parents groups making with it down here. Well, just like up in the first world Practically none fact is bullies have existed since the beginning of time and if you're a scrawny little kid
[19:15] You're gonna get picked on that's life and no amount of PTA meetings and parental blathering are gonna stop that And if you don't like your kid being a victim send them to karate class or get them a stun gun Now on the subject of clinical psychology, you know that in every school up in the United States They have a psychologist or a counselor with a psychology degree on staff in my day They called them guidance counselors and even us kids knew how useless they were back in my day If you weren't a troublemaker like me You only saw that guidance counselor about once or twice a year and he never even knew your name And it was a job. They never really could get fired from no matter how bad the counseling advice was that they gave their students I mean, I got nothing but bad advice from mine
[20:00] I remember he told me that I shouldn't go into the engineering field because it was gonna be saturated with laid-off aerospace engineers And when I got my bachelor's degree in engineering us engineer graduates were the only kids in demand so much for school counselors Huh? Anyway down here in Latin America as you might imagine in the public grade schools and high schools They don't have school psychologists or even guidance counselors I mean most of the public schools don't even have syncs with running water or toilets that flush Or even enough desks for the students Now most of the private schools down here, of course have psychologists and guidance counselors on staff It's the first world thing to do, you know So apart from having your kid in private school, what happens if you or your kid happens to need a clinical psychologist?
[20:46] I mean, they're not completely useless. There are certainly cases when you might need one For example with domestic problems like alcoholism spousal abuse and incest Well, anyway, I picked up one of the big Salvador newspapers the other day and I checked out the professionals section in the classified ads Where professionals like doctors and accountants advertise their services and I noticed there were a few ads for clinical psychology Services too and here's a typical one. It says we offer private individual one-on-one therapy Conferences and group sessions our staff is university-trained 100% board certified make an appointment today for a free Consultation and here's the part I like fees $10 a session you heard me $10 each now
[21:33] I don't know if appointments down here are half an hour or an hour It doesn't really matter all I know that up in the States a session is about an hour and it costs anywhere from 75 to 250 bucks depending if you're in the big city or out in the boonies So again, I just brought this psychiatric business up to point out how that lag time effect penetrates every aspect of Latin America I would say that down here clinical psychology and psychiatric sessions are on par with what it was like back in the 1960s or 70s back in the States However, I doubt even back in the day of old Siggy Freud and Carl Jung that a psychiatrist in any country in the world Ever charged 10 bucks a session only Lucy from a Charlie Brown's Christmas was ever cheaper and to change this subject a little bit The other day I was in Salvador with Eddie at one of his restaurants
[22:20] And we were sitting around the table with Eddie's cousin who came down to Salvador from the States for the very first time and let me tell you his 28 year old cousin Lester Eddie says is beginning to be a big nuisance He thinks Eddie's gonna give him some golden tips on how to become a big success down here like Eddie did And you know what it looks like to me And I think Eddie's getting the picture Lester has hooked his wagon to Eddie's and Eddie doesn't like it and I got the feeling that there was gonna be some trouble Coming down the line. Remember what old Benjamin Franklin said He said fish and houseguests start to smell after three days Ain't that the truth and when I first ran into Eddie and Lester Less had already been staying at Eddie's house about three weeks and Eddie's a real laid-back guy
[23:06] But I could tell it was starting to get to him because he was trying to pawn less off on me But uh-uh, I was having none of that In fact, that's one of the unspoken problems that expats have when word filters back Especially to the younger male members of your family back in the States when they find out that you're living the life of Riley And of course, they're not they're up in the first world on that treadmill or worse unemployed So they decide to come down and look you up and it could be like less for an indefinite period of time Now it seems every expat I know has had that happen to him at least once There's nothing worse than becoming a short notice tour guide for a wayward distant relative that shows up at your front porch one day That's another reason so many expats I know keep a very low profile not just to keep under the radar of nosy big brother
[23:55] But it doesn't always work that way, you know, at least Lester gave me an interesting take on the youth of Latin America He said he really felt nostalgic as he drove through the middle and lower middle-class parts of San Salvador He said it reminded him of back when he was a kid like seven eight nine years old before the internet and smartphones and all that when kids would come home from school and immediately go outside and play football or soccer or Wrestler played catch race each other and play outdoor games and well, they just had to get out of the house You know and sure He said the neighborhoods are third world and all that dingy and kind of scruffy around the edges But the kids don't seem to mind a bit They're having fun and getting exercise like we used to do when we were seven or eight years old We used to live outside. We hated coming in remember that we didn't even want to come home for supper
[24:44] We'd hear our mother calling from six blocks away and then oh you'd had to go and here's another thing Lester said look around you look at the kids playing. Did you notice that they're all skinny? None of them are fat or obese like a third of the kids are in the States Then of course I had to butt in and tell them that well Latin is once they hit 20 or 25 They started getting fat around the middle too because as soon as they get a job and start making money They go for the junk food in McDonald's just like first-world kids But like Lester said the differences young kids down here get real exercise So they really don't pork out extremely young like American kids do and while I was visiting Eddie and Lester We went to go see a movie at the IMAX that movie total recall the remake of that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie with Colin Farrell I'm sure a lot of you've seen that movie and by the way
[25:31] We paid three and a half bucks for a matinee in English with Spanish subtitles of course anyway I noticed something very strange when I was watching that movie, and I want to lay it on you guys right now I guess maybe a half an hour or 20 minutes into the movie the Colin Farrell character. You know the hero He's not sure who he is But he has a clue to go to a safety deposit box in a bank where in the box He could find out his true identity this takes place about 50 years in the future in a distorted horrible world completely controlled by Big Brother where everyone's chipped and tagged recorded and monitored 24-7 wherever they go Anyway, here's the real strange thing He opens up that safety deposit box where he sees a passport and some ID documents and to the left There's a stack of brand-new $50 bills not with the smiling face of Ulysses S. Grant
[26:21] No, but with the smiling face of Obama now that got me thinking did the filmmakers do that to slam Obama since in the movie They're showing you a very dismal and depressing future where there's no privacy no human rights And everyone's a pawn of the state like socialism on steroids. You know I mean when you consider only the most iconic Presidents and statesmen like Franklin Washington Jefferson Lincoln and Grant had their faces on US paper bills in the future according to this movie Obama is some kind of an icon like Lincoln or Franklin obviously But what are the filmmakers really trying to say are they trying to brown-nose Obama by immortalizing him on a $50 bill? Or are they really slamming him by showing how the US way of life has
[27:07] Self-destructed under the corrupt guidance of presidents like him So the filmmakers were either kissing up to him or slapping him in the face But knowing how ultra liberal Hollywood usually is I kind of think it was a move to kiss his ass You know you be the judge have a look at the movie and pay attention They only show that scene for about three seconds, but it's a close-up a very disturbing close-up That's listening to the expat files living in Latin America Coming to you each week from somewhere south of the border and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America the expat files at gmail.com See you next time