#1118 – The Expat Files: Life in Latin America, Crypto, and Cultural Shifts

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 out to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes. I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America The show that tells you just what it's like to live work play and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here So let's get started. All right, as if you need another reason to get the hell out of Dodge Listen to this email from one of our Texas Dave's Remember, there are unofficially more Dave's listening to this podcast than persons of any other name Don't ask me why but with the Dave's of the world. It's a big hit

[00:48] Anyway, Texas Dave says Johnny I got Covid recently and was told I don't qualify for monoclonal Antibody treatment as I have done more research. It's becoming clear Why if this is not a good reason to accelerate my plan B, I don't know what is Why would I want to continue to support a system that denies me? We health care on the basis of my race when I pay for that health care with my tax dollars Then he sends me a link to the Texas MacArthur Medical Center in Irvine, Texas Where it says hospitals across the country are automatically granting monoclonal Antibody treatments to patients of certain races while simultaneously denying them to patients of other reasons The MacArthur Medical Center website says that Latinx or black patients automatically qualify for monoclonal antibody treatments

[01:36] Others such as those who are white must instead qualify via other means that is by having other risks such as obesity heart disease or being over 65 All right, Dave. I hear what you're saying. I'm in total agreement But here's the thing guys like you Dave, but let me be a little harsh here You've been listening to my show for maybe five ten years now, right and you still haven't gotten off the damn fence You're no farther along in your plan B than you were five years ago You haven't sold your cars liquidated your properties cashed out of your bank accounts Come down to Latin America a few times get boots underground open a bank account get a lawyer apply for residency get a network going Hate to say it Dave But I'd say 90% of the people listening to this show have great dreams of having a plan B

[02:22] But they're never gonna pull the trigger They're going down with the ship and not just little by little it used to be little by little now It's in great steps and leaps. That's why as I watched the first world collapse from a nice comfortable distance I don't feel sorry for people who are stuck up there whining and complaining of how everything is just going to shit It's sort of a mirror image of what I saw happening with Bitcoin. I started talking about it I think in 2013 when it was 200 bucks I got all kinds of resistance from people calling it a Ponzi scheme people who watched CNN even seasoned investors who watched the markets closely and of course people who paid attention to the mainstream markets because all the gurus there said it was A scam that Jamie diamonds in the world said it was dog poop. Yep dog poop now ten years later They're all in all well, you know the rest of the story. The question is not how did I get so smart?

[03:11] I wasn't smart at all not about crypto. I didn't know crap about it at first Well, it was just that for some reason all the very very smartest nerds and engineers that I knew We're talking about it getting in and diving deep. No, not smart psychologists or MBAs Wall Street types or gender studies people Nope, I was listening to my brilliant nerd esoteric software buddies I'll tell you when you're in a room and you don't even understand what the nerds are talking about You'd be a fool not to ask them what they're investing in and you know within five years Everything's gonna be on the blockchain including real estate and contracts and crypto will be everywhere And if you're not familiar with cryptos or the blockchain, you might as well be riding a camel So you better start learning or you're really gonna be left behind By the way, when people send me emails asking about all those coins and tokens out there

[03:59] I think there's something like 6,000 of them now They asked me for investment advice and I'm not an investment analyst But I'll tell them this all the people I know who've made big money in crypto have not made it by trading They buy a coin or two something on the top ten list the well-known top few that have been there a long time Just go to coin market cap and check it out You'll see and if you're gonna play around in an invest stick with the top five or ten the number one Of course Bitcoin number two Ethereum number three Cardano and as far as making lots of money I don't know anyone who's made lots of money Buy and in selling buy and in selling the guys who buy and hold make the money Then you don't have to worry about the crazy daily fluctuations Just buy some of whatever crypto it is put it in your cold storage wallet and look at it every a couple of months

[04:50] Or whatever you feel like it Just leave it there like a saving spot Only if it really was a savings bond, you'd be losing money to inflation every day Anyway, my advice and I'm not an investment analyst Treat your crypto like a savings account buy hold put it in cold storage and wait The world's financial system is Collapsing the US dollar will go to zero every single fiat currency known a man for the last 2,000 years has gone to zero Because governments keep printing more and devaluing it I know it's a very hard thing to get into your head that the US dollar is doomed It's a failure people still don't believe it when I tell them that back in 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act came into effect Since then the US dollar has lost 93% of its value and that's a success story

[05:38] I know I know every day you get pop-up windows about the latest greatest crypto that you should buy right now cuz it's going to 1000 X right don't get sucked in by that But I have to say if I had no crypto at all and I was just getting started today I think you could make an awful lot of quick money on some of the new tokens that are coming out But 99% of them won't be around in a couple years either But you got to make a full-time job out of it. You got to be really on top of it You can't just say I'm gonna get in today and look at it every couple of days when those new coins and tokens come out You have to get in really early before the pop-up window marketing hits Like I said these days to really make money just getting in right now. You have to be on it 24-7 you have to make it a full-time job Definitely a young person's game Now if you're still hesitant about crypto and you haven't got into it at all

[06:25] You really should take Captain Mango's course He'll hold your hand through the basics and help you buy some and put it in a cold storage wallet And when you're done with that, you'll have the most important thing of all when it comes to crypto You'll have confidence. You won't be scared of it anymore Man, I remember way back when when I first started playing around with crypto You know shooting a bit of Bitcoin from one wallet to another man It was nerve-racking because it would take a couple of minutes for the transaction to verify And sometimes you'd sweat it out because during that little time period from when you sent this stuff to when the other person Received it. Nothing was happening. You were in limbo so to speak Yeah I remember those days when your heart would pound a bit when you'd send a very large sum across the internet and wonder Hmm fingers crossed is it gonna get there or is some hacker gonna intercept it along the way because that stuff did happen

[07:15] You know, especially before cold storage wallets like treasures and Nanos Before that you had to leave your coins on an exchange that you had no control of you'd have to trust them in someone else's Hands, which is not a good thought Some of those exchanges ripped you off for disappeared completely like mot Gox So thank God for cold storage wallets and kept mangle show you how to use one of those In fact, he'll help you buy one. It only something like 75 bucks But the best 75 bucks you'll ever spent if you're into crypto But back to this idea of having a nice plan B and getting the hell out of that You know for the life of me, I can't understand Why so many smart way above average people listening to this show? I just don't get how you could tolerate living up in the states one second longer. The news is terrible. It's never getting better

[08:03] It's always getting worse hour by hour. You're losing the value of your savings and income They're forcing you into an experimental facts chipping away at your freedoms You're living in a big brother state and yet somehow you're still there and whining and complaining about it In fact, people send me their own personal horror stories every day like this one from Alex in Pennsylvania. I mean, Pennsylvania Mmm, Pennsylvania. That was where a rockin Bullwinkle lived, right? There I go showing my age again anyway, he says Johnny Let's see how much hot water I can get into by stating a simple fact that no one wants to admit in public but in private Yes, and because it's such an uncomfortable confirmation of what the wokesters will call white privilege And it's so on PC. You might not want to read it on the air because you might get canceled

[08:50] Alex believe me. They've tried. In fact, I'm gonna tell you a little story about that too. If I have time anyway Alex says let's talk Western civilization, which is in heavy disrepute lately, even though Western culture and invention is responsible for pretty much everything. That's good and Technological in this world everything that makes life easier for us people will admit that in private But they won't say it publicly or they'll get blocked from Facebook and Twitter boo-hoo Now I'm not kidding when I make that assertion with the exception of few good anomalies like tauism martial arts yoga oriental cooking acupuncture and Eastern natural medicine If you take the inventions and discoveries that came out of the Eastern world and subtract the ones that came out of the Western world It would be less than zero without the patents and inventions of the West the whole world would resemble Africa, Cambodia and Mongolia

[09:42] Not even the Africa Cambodia and Mongolia of today, but 200 years ago There would be no techno cars. No AC no hot water. No refrigeration. No radio TV airplanes penicillin or even the flush toilet Hmm stop for a second there Alex You know that reminds me a few years back when I went on a cruise and we stopped in Istanbul Turkey Went to a pretty nice restaurant. At least it looked nice until you went to the bathroom. Guess what kind of toilets they had None. They had a hole in the floor They had a place marked on the ground for your two feet. So, you know where to stand or squat Yep, I got to see and use more than once the Middle Eastern version of a toilet now Remember, I'm not talking about a hole-in-the-wall snack bar or coffee shop

[10:28] This was a very nice restaurant with nice tablecloths and wine glasses, etc. All right enough with disgusting stuff Let's get back to Alex. He says Johnny the idea is like individualism freedom of thought freedom of speech science rationality Capitalism, etc. Our products of Western civilization. These are concepts that no longer have any defenders anywhere They're under attack in every woke University curriculum and not just in the States but everywhere Sorry to say and I think you know this but 99% of all the useful patents in this world were produced by white guys of Western European descent whether they were in Europe when they did the hard science work or in the USA Canada Australia or Israel It's an uncomfortable fact that wokesters deny and though politicians lie

[11:15] Numbers don't then he says it makes me laugh Muslim and another terrorists go on TV and berate Western Decadence and use Western tools and drones to wreak havoc behead people and set off bombs with smartphone timers igniters There could be no terrorist attacks as we know them without the use of hated white male inventions of Western technology And finally, he says how can the world be healthy when what passes for a ruling class in the West actually hate themselves and those in Charge allow the middle class to collapse economically and psychologically When everything is politically motivated instead of scientifically tested. So there's my two cents Johnny go ahead read it on your show at the risk of being canceled. Don't worry about me I've already been canceled by my wife. She quit listening to my ranch long time ago assigned Alex the least woke guy in my neighborhood

[12:04] Well, thanks for that Alex. The only thing I can think is why do I get emails like this all the time from very smart people? Like you Alex and yet you're up in, Pennsylvania Yeah, I haven't acted on a plan, but you're not voting with your feet. So what am I supposed to feel sorry for you? I don't hey, I've been whistling the same tune for what is it? 11 12 years now on the show and Never once have I seen a single sign that it's getting any better only worse 30 years of year over year first-world deterioration And yet only a tiny percentage of people have gotten the hell out of dodge or have even made the effort To get some boots on the ground in a foreign country and have an escape plan All right enough said about that Now I know everyone loves a good gringo ripoff story And the gringos I know who seem to get ripped off quite a bit are the ones who go to gringo tourist areas because that's

[12:54] Where the locals look at yes dollar signs and just a mark to be gouged But you know there's been sort of a new kind of gringo ripoff scheme That's been going down and just the last couple of years since this crypto boom has taken over That's a very young gringo guys. Mostly guys who've made sudden millions in the crypto market They realize after a year or two of buying Lamborghinis and throwing huge parties that there are huge tax consequences that live it in the USA So they look to relocate in much friendlier tax jurisdictions like Puerto Rico and Panama those seem to be the most popular millionaire billionaire crypto Relocation destinations up to now along with Dubai. I understand. It's all about the limited tax consequences, of course and Brand-new on the map been the last year is El Salvador, but that's just so new but it's catching on

[13:42] Anyway, a lot of these young instant crypto millionaires love to show off their wealth They love to buy really expensive cars bling in the mansions saying that they're putting on the dog is way too kind bottom line They're just asking to get gouged and some of them have been really taken to the cleaners like for example This story of a young 20-something guy who moved to Panama for tax reasons after he made his first millions and got his house his mansion I should say stolen from him by his own lawyer and then if you can believe it it happened again, I Allow me to pick out pieces of an interview with this guy so you can get the gist He says I moved out to Panama as a rich young gringo Then he says what do you think happens to rich young gringos in the third world who like to show off their wealth?

[14:33] First thing you have to know he says is you learn about Panama from one or two of their newspapers They've got two main newspapers the prince which all the gringo is down there read It's a cleaned up sort of whitewashed paper. There are no pictures of dead bodies in La Prensa No, no, things no gangland shootings However, the other newspaper the one the people on the street read La Credica has all the dead bodies and all the corpses Drug suit outs executions the real stuff. So depending on which newspaper you read You'll find there's a wildly different opinion about what's going on in Panama He said in his case. He was a victim of a scheme where he had fake bearer shares You see almost everyone owns property in Panama owns it through a corporation It's a way to avoid taxation when you sell the property just hand over to corporation to the buyer and now he owns it tax-free

[15:24] Then he says I bet you had never heard about a guy who's had his house stolen from his mansion by his own lawyer But it happened to him twice turns out the Panama lawyer created a corporation They had a shareholders meeting but in reality it was fake, but the young rich gringo was none the wiser He ended up not owning the chairs of his own company, which owned his mansion So he lost his house of a lawyer who set up the corporation for him So he hired a lawyer to go after that lawyer to get the house back and that he says actually worked He got the house back So you wonder how did his lawyer in the first place get the house when he was living in it? Well, he convinced him to leave he said come on down to Columbia for a vacation visit my family So he did he said he and his girlfriend went to Columbia He's just sitting around in a big game room playing Xbox and five guys with guns come into the room

[16:14] I remember now this is Columbia and the leader of the group said you don't own your house anymore It's mine. If you have a problem with that we could settle it right here So in the deal, he lost his cars his office building and his mansion all because of a crooked lawyer in the fact that He just had to show the world who was mr. Young millionaire. So how do you find that lawyer? Well, he just asked some people he didn't know all that well and his Spanish sucked Of course, anyway, he says when he thinks about it and looks back He now realizes everyone in Panama who knew him was working an angle to gouge gringos Especially young gringos who made a ton of money quickly who were stupid with their money and showed it So anyway, he went back to Florida and hooked up with another Latino lawyer to go after some of these guys Only to find out later on the Latino lawyer received his law degree in prison

[17:05] He'd been in prison because he ran a stolen Rolex watch operation man. You can see what's happening here, right? He just got in with the wrong bunch of guys, but to this day She's still a multimillionaire maybe even a billionaire though when he thinks about what happened in Panama He feels like an idiot and licks his wounds and now of course You'll never go back to Panama and he lives in an undisclosed third-world country very very low profile It's taught him the lesson that you really have to stay under the radar and be as anonymous as you possibly can't Oh, and then he said he found out that his lawyer would keep paying the judge in Panama to hide the paperwork So that no one could ever really investigate the case thoroughly The paperwork for the corporation that owned the cars the houses the office buildings, etc

[17:51] Was always conveniently missing. So lesson number one. You need a trusted Latin lawyer. How do you find one? Well, I've known mine our seminar lawyer for 25 years and people may say he's slow He's on mine at a time, but they all are but there's never been a single complaint about him ever Ripping off a client by the way, are you one of those idiots who's still using a mask outdoors or in your car? Well a brand new study from the University of Bristol in the UK says that all Corona viruses lose 90% of their infectiousness within five minutes of becoming airborne That means masks are totally ineffective Because as soon as a virus is free in the air within five minutes It's deactivated and that of course means if you have a mask and you've got COVID in our shedding you're

[18:37] Concentrating those viral particles within your mask. Yeah, idiot The study says that much higher humidity as for example within a mask the droplets do not dry out instantly And remain fluid for longer, which means the virus remains stable and infectious during that time Anyway, the study concludes the Heidi touted airborne spread Mechanism may not be as important as we thought it was hmm Oh, and by the way for all you guys and gals who still think Mexico is a great option for a plan B Did you see the news just this week the corpses of eight men and two women were found piled in a Mazda SUV? Parked under a decorated Christmas tree right beside the governor's palace in the city of Zacatas in northern central, Mexico Authorities say at least seven of them have been killed by

[19:24] Exphyxiation from strangulation with plastic wrap and packing tape placed over their faces to smother them The question is how is it possible to leave an SUV full of corpses in front of the governor's palace? And what kind of sign was it supposed to send it appears the driver just drove up to the palace got out walked away without encountering any security forces at all Of course, so you guys and gals out there are absolutely convinced that Mexico's your plan B You just love Mexico this kind of stuff doesn't bother you right? It doesn't rattle. Yeah, just a little bit What's it gonna take to convince you what's it gonna take? Oh, and here is a step in the right direction this news comes from Ecuador The headline says the assets of 25 generals of the National Police Force are to be audited by the comptroller's office Hmm first thing you have to ask is why are there 25 frickin generals in the National Police Force, please

[20:15] I've seen some pictures of these guys and they're all well over five feet and mostly under 400 pounds So they got that going for them. So then why are these guys getting audited? Well, according to the auditors responsible for the special examinations They're asserting that the assets declared by the 25 generals do not coincide with the income Obtained from their police salaries. Hmm you think and here's the part that finally makes sense because you know Everywhere you go in Latin America generals Colonels captains cops and military officers of all kinds. They all drive nice cars and live in houses way beyond their means But in this case, they're doing something different. They're investigating the generals and their families Yep, they're going after the generals their spouses and their common law partners and minor children because that's how they hide dough

[21:06] You know, they structure it through their wives and kids. Well, we'll see how that turns out. Oh And another thing if you're wondering about this term Latinx Which drives people down here in Latin America nuts. They can't stand the term. No one uses it Well, the poll just came out in the western United States where most of the Latinos reside and get this the poll came from a Miami-based democratic firm focusing on Latinos They found only 2% of Latinos in the United States use the word Latinx to describe themselves and almost none of them are first-generation or new arrivals In fact, the term Latinx is considered by some Latinos to be only used by pretentious woke Latinos as for example Republican Ruben Galiendo a Democrat from Arkansas

[21:52] He's the head of the congressional Hispanic caucus He said his congressional staff is not allowed to use Latinx in official communications He says in reality there is very little to no support for its use and it's sort of seen as something used inside the belt We or in Ivy League settings However, the term is often used by left-leaning Latino activists, but it's failed to gain buy-in from the people as supposed to empower Bottom line it was a bad and misguided experiment time to retire it from official use he says Oh, and this is interesting and I figured it all along It says the term Latinx may be popular among highly educated woke Latinos in urban areas But Hispanics in rural areas don't understand its purpose and are puzzled by it completely We're talking about Latinos in the States

[22:38] Of course, and it says get this if you want to deliver an important message to Latinos in the USA And you throw out the word Latinx There's an instant disconnect users of the term obviously haven't done their homework new arrivals and first-generation Latinos will switch you off. All right, let me tell you about one of my own related pet peeves Now there's a section in each LA Times called the Latinx files idiotic stupid and ridiculous I know I read some of them and they mostly make me want to vomit the editor and main writer is a guy named Fidel Martinez, I mean really Fidel as in Castro who he openly admires The guy is a perfect example of one of the most toxic woke college educated University brainwashed second generation Latinos I've ever come across. For example, here's just a little snippet of an article. He wrote in defense of that rotten

[23:27] disgusting rag-a-thon music He says quote back in November a concert pianist named James Road in talking about the lasting legacy of classical music Said to me Fidel, please explain to me this rag-a-thon music and this rag-a-thon superstar bad bunny I'm not saying that it's shit. He says to super woke stir Fidel He says I just don't understand the popularity of it. If someone can explain it to me, please and here's what Fidel says I just want to pop this guy in a kisser The soul of a reggaeton was created on the street It is often minimized to music that degrades and sexualizes women dismissed as repetitive misogynistic noise despite its nuance and legacy of resistance against white supremacy What that's a

[24:15] New one you get that he's saying rag-a-thon music is resistance against white supremacy I think I'm gonna have a stroke here before I get done reading this And then let's feed out more on heads the balls to say call me biased But in my mind rag-a-thon music is as robust and sophisticated as any other music genre out there Then he says as per rag-a-thon artist bad bunny a guy with more face piercings than brain cells He says he's brought rag-a-thon to unparalleled heights But you don't have to take my word for it He says you can ask any of his billions of listeners Yeah, billions of listeners with two-digit vocabularies and IQs of around 40. Alright, so as for the benefit of the doubt Let's go over the five major themes in rag-a-thon music. Number one sex. Number two money

[25:05] Number three bling. Number four cars. Number five more sex matter of fact There are no other themes in reg-a-thon music. Oh Except I forgot it's a legacy of resistance against white supremacy That said just a word of advice for all you expat gone to bees and wannabes and all of you who've got your plane be Going and you've been down here and have got boots on the ground You will find reg-a-thon music blasting out of every street corner and that may be one of the only positive Advantages to not knowing any Spanish. You won't have to listen to what those morons are singing about Just know you won't be able to avoid it It's everywhere and you won't get anywhere trying to convince Latinos how vacant useless and Demeaning to women it is and though latinas down here know that they understand the words for them. It's not all about the words

[25:56] It's about the rhythm and the beat and if you can dance to it, and I'll let rag-a-thon music man You can dance to it, but it has created a gigantic group of shift list Latinos that think they're gonna be the next bad bunny That's the real sad part. It breaks down like this about half of the young Adolescent and young adult Latinos think they're gonna be soccer stars and the rest think they're gonna be regga-thon arrows But those are highly improbable dreams So then you've got maybe 40% of young Latinos going to university with only about two to five percent actually graduating after four or five years In fact, I still meet young Adolescent Latinos all the time would tell me that they're on the trajectory To be the very first person in their family to get a college degree

[26:41] Think about it that's what it was like in the states back in the 60s with all my young friends way back when most of Our parents didn't have university degrees. Well, my mother did but that was rare Problem is Latinos are stuck in that mindset that any college degree makes their kid a huge success boy Are they wrong? It said they're pumping out business and psychology majors to beat the band and all they can get is a bank teller's job or a Starbucks I'd say they've got some really terrible high school counselors down here But that's just the way it was when I was a kid too up in the States I remember clearly my high school counselor telling me that engineering was not a very good field to go into because After the moonshot NASA was winding down and laying off. Meanwhile four years later. I had five Solid engineering job offers before I even graduated from engineering school guidance counselors, man. They should string them up by their thumbs

[27:32] You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan B We can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in Central America Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan B Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com. No spamos