El Salvador expected to default as Bitcoin plummets

MSTR as a bitcoin proxy made sense at a time when you could not easily own bitcoins, but there are direct ways to do it now anyway (GBTC, BITO).

I am ignorant and I just don't know, but which regulation would forbid you from buying a bitcoin ETF but allow you to buy junk el salvador bonds?

> If the president wants to gamble his own wealth on bitcoin this is absolutely fine.

So, how would you fix El Salvador and give their people the best chance at a good life?

A lot of the anti-crypto sentiment on HN portrayed El Salvador's actions as a very bad and irresponsible move, but I'd say that the President of El Salvador is not only making the right move for his country, but personally has far more skin in the game than any democratically elected leader from most other countries. If his move doesn't work out in the long-run, he will likely eventually be violently removed from office. Hell, he risks assassination from other countries too merely for "stepping out of his lane", so to speak.

Why is it the right move for his country? How much of a gamble is any action when you don't have much to lose?

I don't want to disparage El Salvadoran people in any way: but the reality is that they're a very poor country with a very bad education system and not much industry and have had major crime problems, and many of their people who build up some success and resources in life still see their best path to success as finding a way to get into other countries. Their only real path out of this situation is either humanity inventing free energy and replicators to give them unlimited resources, or them taking a shot at being a friendly jurisdiction for the next major industry and technology before everybody else truly embraces it.

They're like a small-market NBA team with no real chance of winning a title without tanking. Everybody is going to rip them for tanking, but that's their only real path to win.

El Salvador is now in a non-zero position to be a wealthier country in the long run. That's much better than the basically 0 percent chance they had before their crypto actions.

But you were the one that introduced the analogy that depended on this difference not breaking it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31338234

The whole point was that it was explicitly said that it was not an addiction! Yet, you still want to punish.

That's not a crash, that's more-or-less by design. Currency, i.e. money, is engineered to be inflationary and economists consider the optimum inflation rate to be 2%-4% per year. For the past 20 years we've been on the high side of that target, but we're on target. Inflationary currency encourages investment and spending. Saving currency in the bank is not producing value (there's even a parable about this).

The loans are a way to circumvent budgeting. Not sure on specifics but it's easier for them to accept the loan vs getting cash handed to them by the country's comptroller (Contraloria is the entity in Spanish).

You go to the IMF when no one wants to loan you money.

Some of the employees in those institutions are actually connected politically locally and they favor insiders from their party. Others want the press-release and don't give a fuck if the project actually gets completed or if it impacts people. They're just as involved in politics as the locals: I'll give you this loan so you have cash to do whatever and you help me with this project I'm pushing throughout the region.

Sounds like a regular day at the office I guess but dunno I thought people who worked in these institutions wanted to do good. I guess I ate up some propaganda and never questioned it until I saw it first-hand through my wife's experience.

This sounds strict, but think about it: every single company I've seen (correct me if this is biased in the wrong direction) doesn't allow just any employee to take out a loan. Heck, even the CEO can't just go to the bank and take out a loan if the collateral are assets/equity in the company - the board needs to approve that.

Why would we allow someone who's tenure is basically guaranteed to be <5 years to take out loans?

I know this sounds like a non-answer but maybe it's that simple: a specific institution/bureaucrat can't take leverage. The central govt can take out loans and increase budget to hand out.

[1] https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/Sindicato-de-doce...

[2] https://m.dw.com/es/el-salvador-m%C3%A1s-de-200-jueces-cesad...

[3] https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/Cuestionan-retiro...

Then its meaningless. It should just be subtracted form total debt.

Do you see the problem or not?

The countries that could make most use of these crypto ATMs have no access to them.

That was true even when the Salvadoran Colon was stable for most of its history. It's been very close to 8.75 for the past 30 years.

I don't know. Birth control fails and not everyone has a regular monthly cycle. Heck, if you are on the right birth control, you won't have one at all.

You could easily be looking at being 2-3 months into the pregnancy without realizing it, depending on the body changes you experience. You might just think you've been sick. If you aren't expecting to get pregnant and don't have the "normal" symptoms, you are likely to continue doing drugs as you would otherwise.

Heck, if you were addicted and tried to get treatment, you might not find anything better than something non-medical (AA and the lot) even if you need it.

In other words, despite your best effort, it might not be avoided. Add to that the fact that a lot of the studies on "crack babies" have been debunked: Not all drugs actually harm the fetus as much as was advertised, and might not have harmed the baby at all. I'm not an expert, but I have corrected that propaganda in my head.

And I*ll mention: Had she gotten an abortion, she wouldn't have charges.

1) A 17 week old fetus is not a baby nor is it viable outside of the womb.

2) There's no evidence methamphetamine actually caused the miscarriage. Miscarriage is extremely common (25% of known pregnancies) and it's almost impossible to say exactly why any single miscarriage happens. In this case the fetus also had a genetic anomaly and a placenta abruption.

3) Miscarriages are more common among certain people - for example those who have PCOS, are of advanced maternal age, shift workers, and people with diabetes. If a shift worker with diabetes and PCOS has a miscarriage we don't say she "killed her baby" and criminalize it.

4) 50% of pregnancies are unplanned in the US. It's extremely likely if a drug user or regular drinker has an unplanned pregnancy they accidentally expose a fetus to those substances.

5) This whole thing is absurd because in Oklahoma it's perfectly legal to purposefully abort a 17 week old fetus (for now).

Beyond that, there's hundreds of cases, but you only replied to one. If you don't like that one how about:

>27-year-old African-American woman Marshae Jones was indicted by an Alabama grand jury on manslaughter charges when she lost her 5-month-old fetus after being shot. The person who shot Jones, whom the police claimed was acting in self-defense, was not charged in the shooting. Jones, however, was held responsible for being in a fight while pregnant, and faced up to 20 years in prison.

Or

>In 2016, Katherine Dellis gave birth to a stillborn baby in her home. She went to the doctor to receive necessary medical care afterward, only to be arrested. An autopsy showed the baby had died about 30 to 32 weeks into the pregnancy. She was sentenced to five months in prison for concealing a dead body, despite the fact that the fetus had already died in the womb.

Or

>a woman fell down the stairs, went to a doctor because she was concerned about her baby, and the doctor interpreted her concern as intent to harm her unborn child. The police were called and she had to spend two nights in jail. Fortunately, charges were dropped.

This actually varies greatly by age, as older women have higher rates of miscarriage due to things like amniotic insufficiency, and genetic abnormalities which also cause predispose towards miscarriage

>an induced abortion ("chemical abortion") is identical, medically, to a spontaneous abortion ("miscarriage")

This is not medically correct, and it sounds like a political talking point.

Many spontaneous abortions fail to implant due to genetic abnormalities, and come out like a period. Minimal pain or impact. Similarly, genetic abnormalities can cause spontaneous abortions that happen early pregnancy in the first trimester, causing the fetus not to grow, and then to abort.

There are several different chemicals used for an induced, chemical abortion such as salt, Prostaglandin, Urea, as well as steroids like mifepristone [1], or Misoprostol[2]

Chemical abortions on the other hand can be much more catastrophic, and involve intense enough contractions to cause permanent damage to the uterus and vagina. As you can see from the safety data sheets, these are non-trivial risks associated with these.

As a pregnancy involves signficant hormone changes, a pre-implantation spontaneous abortion without implantation would not change estrogen levels significantly. A fully implanted pregnancy would change estrogen levels as the breasts increase in size and prepare for milk production. Some studies have shown 90% increases in breast cancer rates post-abortion, while others contend no change.

[1] https://www.drugs.com/monograph/mifepristone.html

[2] https://www.drugs.com/mtm/misoprostol.html