#725 – The Expat Files: Life in Latin America, Cultural Trends, and Global Financial Issues

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 Hello there all you expat 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 this show goes out on Sunday, January 7th. I'm right in the middle of my expat insider seminar Yeah, I always record my shows a couple days in advance so I can ship them off to New York in time for the mother ship to put them on the schedule and

[00:47] Being that I'm knee-deep in my seminar right now and it lasts around a week Just a little heads up that there won't be two new expat file shows Coming after this one, but to repeat best stuffs I mean I've got seven hundred and what 25 shows now So I'm sure there's a best stuff in there somewhere which also in first There's a worst ever a lot of worst stuffs in there, too Hmm. Should I have admitted that so just to repeat this week? There'll be two shows but they'll be repeats. We'll let studio engineers decide which ones they are anyway The next brand new show will be Friday January 19th the following week All right thought we'd start out this show with some good news Turns out five Mexican politicians were killed in one week and that means there's only

[01:33] 15,000 toward and 22 to go. Hey, I'm serious five were killed in one week You know what they call that don't you a good start? I know what some of you're thinking not every single politician is a dirty lard ass thieving piece of crap Well, I beg to differ Nice that there are a few of you optimists out there But I don't think so which reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw not too long ago was on a car of course here in Latin America that was shipped out from the states The bumper sticker of course was in English and everyone down here speaks Spanish at least 99.9% of them because I'm off the gringo tourist trail Which begs the question? Why don't they just peel it off? I mean if they don't understand what it says, it's in English. Why keep it on not only that They leave the US dealership decal or metal plate on there, too

[02:21] Which means absolutely nothing to the average Latin American. So why don't they just peel that off? You know start fresh with an unblemished Unbumper stickered car. I think some of you know why it's because Everything in English has a cool kind of cache down here Even bumper stickers t-shirts and logos that are absolutely indecipherable for anyone who doesn't speak English That's the same reason why t-shirts sweatshirts hats and anything from the states with any kind of English lettering on it Are so damn popular here in Latin America in fact Even though most of that stuff's printed right here in Latin America or in China and shipped right back to the states for sale No matter if it's got English words or English lettering of any kind or any figure or symbol that's

[03:06] Recognizable as something from up in the states like the New York or Chicago Skyline a rock band the Golden Gate Bridge Statue of Liberty Mount Rushmore my jammy beach or anything Mickey Mouse or Disney Man, Latins are just in love with that kind of stuff. They eat it right up It's just amazing even when you turn on one of the copycat morning TV shows You see bad Latin copies of Good Morning America style shows in every big Latin market Or I should say all over the airwaves. There are bad Latin copies of bad US shows It never fails the hosts or present the daughters or present the doors That would be the presenters are forever showing up with t-shirts sweaters hats etc with English letters and sayings on them And it never fails that once in a while

[03:52] They'll throw in an English slang word too, and I'm thinking and you would too What's that all about when the entire watching or listening audience speaks Spanish and almost zero English? I have to admit there have been times when I've been sitting in the living room of a Latin person's house Just bored to death with what's on a TV and the conversation too, and I have asked that question Why are the presenters wearing hats t-shirts sweaters? Whatever with English letters and sayings on them and what's with the sprinkling of English words like okay? fantastic cool and awesome Those aren't to be found in a Spanish language In all cases the answers I get from the Latinos. I'm sitting with is well They're just showing off trying to impress everyone with their knowledge of Los Estados the states

[04:38] So that's what the upper classes wealthy classes and wannabes do they sprinkle their vernacular with common Sometimes pretty outdated gringo slang words and man There's nowhere in Latin America you hear more of that stuff than on Latin American college campuses And that's where you'll see the most first-world copycat fashions, too So everyone I mean everyone from the riches to the poorest have clothes in their wardrobe no matter how big or small With English language sayings on it's the ultimate sign of gringo wannabe ism And it's funny Latinos especially young Latinos and Latinos are Terrifically proud of all the clothes they have with English letters and sayings on them and again I repeat unless the words are one syllable or extremely simple they have no idea of their meaning you think they'd try google translate

[05:28] Huh, but even though most have smart or somewhat smartphones. They don't even know there's google translate there to help them That's why sometimes gringles and expats will do double takes Thinking I wouldn't wear that nor would I let my kid walk out of the house with that on just too offensive Because we read those things and occasionally we'll see a really crude gross or outlandish saying We're seeing a lot of t-shirts these days sprinkled with four-letter words You know stuff that would definitely make your mom or grandma wins In fact a few times I've taken some gringos through some Spanish Cathedrals around Christmastime and a lot of people are coming in and out and man I saw a couple of adolescent girls with English phrases on their t-shirts that would have got them kicked out in a Second if it happened up in the States So let me ask you this if you had a t-shirt sweater or had what a foreign language saying on it

[06:17] Wouldn't you want to know exactly what it said before you wore it out in public? I think so meanwhile up in the States of course everyone has t-shirts sweaters and hats with English sayings on them Cutesy stuff clever stuff semi vulgar stuff for the younger set sayings. We all understand of course It's our native language, so we mix and match accordingly depending on the occasion not so however with the locals here in Latin America The odd thing is and you don't really want to bring this up at a party because it's ego deflating Not to you, but to the Latino You're speaking to the guy who doesn't even know his t-shirt is totally offensive or inappropriate for the occasion even so Probably no one else at the party gets it except you the gringo Just know you see that all the time and the guy wearing the offensive t-shirts totally in love with it

[07:07] He thinks he's cool And he shines even more in his own mind that is when he sees that you a gringo noticed it So you may be cringing inside, but why dissuade him from his fantasy which reminds me all those years I lived in Chicago I never once saw a t-shirt hat or a sweater with a Spanish language saying on it except maybe Joe's taco palace or Garcia plumbing But back to the subject of lard ass thieving politicians everywhere for you optimists out there who think there are some good ones I offer up this bumper sticker. I saw not so long ago. I said I Shall not steal the government hates competition God and to think it took me seven and a half minutes to get to that punchline

[07:53] By the way many times I've walked up to a Latino who had a cool English saying his t-shirt or sweater Whatever and I'd compliment him saying something like I like to share it Do you know what it means and I'll tell you they're all happy and smiling and glad a gringo came up to him And said such a thing, but they never seem to know what it really means Especially if it's a clever saying now That's not to say Latinos don't have various items of clothing with Spanish words and sayings on them. That's pretty common, too Especially when it comes to soccer paraphernalia, I see that everywhere But I'll tell you expat Eddie has tested the real value of those things Versus the value of a t-shirt with an English saying on it In fact one time we were in a beach bar And we were having pretty much the same Latin t-shirt versus English t-shirt discussion

[08:39] And he made a bet with me that he could trade t-shirts His grungy old weathered worn Led Zeppelin t-shirt for any t-shirt in the place that had Spanish letters on it That is any t-shirt a guy was wearing so I pointed to a guy nearby and sure enough. He made the trade He said it was so easy probably could have squeezed a few bucks out of him, too In fact a long time ago before Eddie got tied down with the restaurant biz I saw him pull that little game with an adolescent kid who was shining his shoes And you know all this talk says a lot about the Latino society doesn't it you may think I'm picking on them here making fun Of them and all that but the truth is that the bigger reality is that you read articles And you hear people say gringos are disliked throughout the world

[09:26] Well that seems to be the case in Europe, and it's definitely the case in the Middle East Where they actually get points for killing us, but in Latin America. It's just the opposite Although it's true, and you can't deny there are ugly Americans all over the world not to mention the ridiculously heavy hand of our government and military and what's the count now 230 different foreign military bases man if There's any country that needs a come-up, and it's a u.s. And it's coming They just can't mind their own friggin business They want their fingers in everyone else's pie But still in Latin American in certain parts of Asia your gringo advantage is alive and well Speaking of the gringo advantage, maybe some would call it a disadvantage You know everyone in the States has someone in the family who's got an artificial joint or prosthesis

[10:17] Wow where'd that come from talk about slamming on the brakes and change in the subject huh in fact my mother Who's in her mid 80s now? She belongs to what I call the widows Club a bunch of nice old ladies whose husbands have croaked a long time ago Yeah, you know the greatest generation guys Most of them didn't make it too much past 70 in their wives are in their 80s and 90s now There's got to be ten or maybe even a hundred thousand little clubs like that throughout the United States old widowed ladies Finally living the good life on their husbands pensions and insurance money hey nothing wrong with that That's what insurance and pensions are for right anyway My mom's in this group of around ten old widowed ladies and between them She told me they've got 19 titanium replacement parts You know knees hips and all that we're not even talking about stuff like pacemakers cataracts cochlear implants

[11:09] Insulin pumps and titanium rods for back injuries and dental implants So what's that got to do with Latin America and the fact that almost no Latin people I've ever met have any of those things Yep, even those 80 and 90 year old guys out there chopping the weeds with their machetes are still operating on original parts Well according to statistics in the u.s. Four and a half million people over the age of 50 have artificial knee replacements And over one million us citizens receive some type of artificial joint replacement each year More often the knees and the hips now for these people Getting through airport security and this is the point with their dignity intact Can be next to impossible largely because of tsa's current policy

[11:56] Of performing enhanced pat downs on anyone who sets off a metal detector So it doesn't matter if you're 90 or even a hundred years old If you're like my mom or anyone in her widows club the tsa is gonna fill you up Now in any other situation you might call that physical assault or even sexual assault Now that said I would want to be the tsa agent that pats down my dear old mom She's a tough old german and can be pretty cantankerous She's not gonna let anybody lay their fingers on her not without a fight And I know as people get older and their bodies start failing They tend to get a bit more cantankerous and short-tempered and you know It would serve those tsa jerks right if once in a while they gotta poke in the ribs or the eye

[12:42] From granny's cane i'm sure that does happen like to see that up on youtube Oh, and here's something that showed up in panama's biggest newspaper in spanish, of course So i'll do some translating here title is europeans hiding money and moving it to latin america first up sometimes Panama city it says at full mecino airport in rome dogs with the guardia Defenanza that would be the finance guards for the italian government are now being trained to detect ink on currency as passengers travel through airports Same is true with dogs being trained for airports in london paris spain and elsewhere where flights take off directly

[13:30] For central and south america. In fact, it says french finance police didn't even know they had them report that 350 000 euros in cash that'd be about 400 000 us dollars are seized each day at the paris airport Man, that's a lot of croissants Then it says all of this has come about rather recently Due to the ever-changing more rigid laws imposed on european banks Leaving many people with previously anonymous bank accounts in places like switzerland with no safe european haven for their money Enter asia and latin america In fact, here's a case of a french scumbag politician who caused some headlines recently because he got caught It says a former french ambassador and politician ambassador to iraq and tenesia

[14:20] with two degrees from prestigious universities and a french legion of honor medal Was stopped by financial agents at the paris airport arrested as one of the growing number of what they call cash commuters As it turns out like the united states at borders You must declare amounts exceeding ten thousand dollars in the states and ten thousand euros In europe that would be around 12 000 us but lately people are taking out much larger sums of money So they don't report it fearing it will be seized officials find it stashed in luggage cake boxes potato chip bags cookie tins wheelchairs and sometimes even in children's pockets and toys and because the largest euro note is

[15:06] 500 euros It's very easy to stash a million dollars or more in a small backpack or even a shoe box Which is why by the way in may of 2016 they quit producing 500 euro notes Because european officials claim the note was too intertwined with criminal activities Yeah, right. We've heard that about the us 100 bill too. There's been talk of phasing that out Hey late breaking news. They found every criminal uses a toothbrush. So gotta ban those By the way to move a million dollars in us 100 notes It takes six times as much space as using 500 euro notes So anyway, they've phased out the 500 euro note, but it's still legally in circulation So are a lot of them out there

[15:52] But not for long because european governments are slowly vacuuming them out of service and they're wearing out too They say the average european note has a life of around five years So they try to retire them before they get so old and damaged. They no longer work in the condom and cigarette machines Hmm food for thought, huh? So with all the new rules and regulations europeans are looking to hide their wealth Avoid taxes and avoid being the object of a high-profile tax investigation case And they have to act fast since swiss bankers are forcing closure of many accounts It goes on to say the new breed of financial border and airport police are routinely detaining business travelers Who are on the way to foreign financial capitals mainly in asia and latin america?

[16:41] Sometimes they're easy to spot it says Carrying minimal luggage and behaving nervously. We see well-dressed professionals in business insurance and banking Carrying large amounts of cash every day says a spokesman for the customs revenue and financial police Then he added 350 000 euros, which is around four hundred thousand dollars. It's nothing exceptional Every day at every european airport large amounts of money flow through clandestinely And there's more and more money due to the ever-changing ever-tightening banking regulations for decades banking secrecy laws in switzerland Have made banks a refuge for foreigners there successfully keeping their finances hidden from government and taxation But switzerland signed a treaty in october 2016 providing for

[17:31] automatic exchange of tax information with depositors home countries eliminating the last message of numbered accounts and autonomous anonymous banking at that same time swiss bankers warned clients to make tax declarations or risk having their swiss accounts closed That left many would-be tax avoiders and people with lots of money With no way to prove where it came from with little choice, but to move their money around the old-fashioned way That would be withdrawing the cash and bringing it to a friendlier jurisdiction So people who traditionally used anonymous swiss bank accounts and other somewhat anonymous accounts in europe had to make a choice Either declare bank accounts and pay high taxes on them or hide their money now the 10 000 euro in cash rule

[18:20] Going through borders and such was introduced in 2007 Taking a page right out of the book of us customs law It says according to european economic union law undeclared cash can be seized and held Along with a fine of 25 on the value of the cash confiscated As a result cash Confiscations have been so lucrative the financial police and their ink sniffing dogs are now working european train stations, too So it says since that swiss ruling in 2016 Cash seizures for example by french customs agents have soared to well over a hundred million euros a quarter It says in france alone on an average day french agents will seize over

[19:08] 300 000 euro 50 percent more than back in 2011 Still financial agents claim that they probably only catch five percent of undeclared cash crossing the country's borders Then it says precautions are growing more elaborate and the fines more eye-catching for example in february Inspectors on the fast train between zurek and paris stopped a spanish traveler carrying two million euros About two and a half million dollars made up entirely of 500 euro notes These bills have come to be nicknamed bin ladens for their associations with money laundering and illicit transactions So it says Meanwhile back in italy cash sniffing dogs are helping financial police who prowled the country's five main airports

[19:57] Confiscating more than 200 million us dollars a year In fact the national secretary of the italian agents customs association says that much much more cash slips through millions of passengers and millions of euros every week All on its way to places like hong kong singapore and latin america Saying big famous names are being ensnared all the time, too For example jerome kahuzik former french budget minister Ilihones president of the beiern munich soccer club in germany and soccer megastar laino messy Of barcelona spain all have been caught smuggling hundreds of thousands of euros across borders Leaving wealthy european travelers to complain that they feel like they are targets in their own countries

[20:46] One european aristocrat who decided he didn't want to be named don't blame him Said that all of his friends were sharing the same stories of italian financial police especially Boarding their docked yachts in the mediterranean without warrants To check for undeclared cash in the safes that are on board And if you don't open the safe or give up the combination or password they take the safe You know, I can almost hear those tycoons bitching now Hmm jeeves, did you see that the nerve barging in like that and tracking dirt on the carpets? Let's sell this yacht and buy an island By the way, i'm hearing more and more stories from expats and gringos now who travel back and forth from the states to

[21:33] Central and south america They're telling me that people are getting stopped on the way in By us customs and tsa and some of them have been picked at random Led into another room and asked politely at first to initialize their computers or ipads, whatever Now you don't have to oblige you can ask for a lawyer or a warrant But then for sure you can kiss your connecting flight. Goodbye And then some So if you cooperate and I suggest you do they'll take your device into another room And they'll come back in 20 minutes or so So what's that all about? Well, they've just copied your hard drive, man So far i've heard that story from at least four different expats and gringos who just happened to be the ones Selected for that little exercise. They think

[22:19] Randomly could be though the way they looked what acted or the substance of the answer They gave when they were asked why they were in latin america and what were they doing there? Now occasionally you get asked that question as the government immigration slug flips through your passport pages And sees you've been someplace other than one of the usual suspect latin american tourist destinations costa rica Mexico panama ecuador or belize So where you travel in latin america could pop a red flag at us immigration upon your return Depending on your answers and if the immigration slugs hemorrhoids are acting up again And you know when I hear firsthand stories like that about the u.s I can hardly believe it was the country I grew up in when I was a kid

[23:06] We were always told that the police states were the soviet union in the eastern black countries But I digress as usual. Anyway, this article concludes by saying the bulk of the seized cash in spain For example includes euros and american dollars on their way mostly to latin america increasingly it says Intermediaries that would be mules or mulas in spanish are being used to move money across borders According to this spokesman. We don't care about his name. He represents spain's national tax agency He says authorities are breaking up money transportation rings all the time One of their favorite methods being using fake or real import export companies smuggling cash out of spain by a train car and

[23:54] Containerships hidden in with legitimate merchandise At least it says people caught moving undeclared amounts of money are dealt with more discreetly than they would be in the u.s They have private judicial proceedings and are almost always fined rather than in prison All right. So money is fleeing europe a nice expensive place to visit But I wouldn't want to live there and it looks like a lot of wealthy europeans are on the very same page All right now from the crypto department there's more crazy ass news coming out of venezuela Turns out they've outlawed all crypto currencies Except one that the government just created the name of this crypto Petrol short, of course for petroleum about all venezuela's got left though. It's all in the ground because they're barely producing

[24:46] Why well the refineries are broken down pieces of junk because of lack of maintenance surprise surprise Now the interesting thing about this report is that lard bag leisure suit wearing madero You know the guy with a rotten retro fashion sense Man, don't you dig those lime green and yellow leisure suits? Now according to press releases You can believe there are press releases He's recruited hundreds of thousands of school kids as this new petro cryptocurrency mining group So the plan is to have high school kids mining this stuff with their computers The only thing is that most kids don't have computers and the ones that do don't have electricity

[25:32] So good luck with that, huh? Sure. The electric power is so subsidized. It's almost free but with four to eight hours a day of outages Well, that's not good for crypto mining Meanwhile, venezuela's private business sector who've been using bitcoin and other cryptos all along even though they're illegal Are total non-believers in this latest socialist style crypto experiment talk about ironies, huh? Crypto is supposed to be highly decentralized Which is one of its true strengths yet. In this case, it's highly centralized in a failed state yet Anyway, members of venezuela's private business sector have been quoted in the newspaper and blog el impulse asserting that Successful cryptocurrency world markets are not managed by governments and its credibility and successes are based on trust

[26:22] Something that does not exist in venezuela with no names attached to that quote. I wonder why It says in order to start mining the new petro cryptocurrency The government says you'll have to sign up with the new registry of cryptocurrency You'll have to supply your national id number You'll sign up on an internet portal where it says in spanish, of course registration is an essential legal requirement to mine and use petro In addition, it says you must use this registry to have access to other digital currencies that may be authorized by the government Hmm other crypto currencies it says It also says by registering on the website

[27:07] You'll be able to acquire other cryptocurrencies for free use and demand in venezuela So what it looks like is by signing up on this site You're actually incriminating yourself and if you hit the checklist for other cryptocurrencies, they're all illegal. So you've just Broadcasted your intentions. So then who's going to sign up by the way Guess what happened just a couple of days ago The website got hacked This is the expat files living in latin america If you want me to help you out with your own plan b just schedule a one-on-one consult Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com And if you want to learn how to move forward with your own plan b from right up there in the states Go to www.expatplanb.com and check out my three videos. See ya nos vemos