After and due to their failed attempt to raise a "Bitcoin bond," the market doesn't believe in the government. Their non-Bitcoin based sovereign debt is now trading at 30 cents on the dollar, down from 94 cents on the dollar last March. [1] This makes it all but impossible for them to raise more sovereign debt on the capital markets.
I don't think it's the price of Bitcoin so much as their going all-in on it and then seeing their gamble collapse out from under them. They've now lost money on all the "dip buys" their dictator was tweeting about - in English only - to show off to the laser-eyed.
Their issue is that they showed such poor judgement.
[edit] Further, of course, they're thumbing their nose at the IMF by refusing to roll back BTC-as-tender. No matter what you think of that demand or that policy decision, if the IMF is the only one lined up to bail you out, it's their way or the high way.
the bitcoin bond was worse than the existing el salvador bonds in all ways.
I.e. you could have bought a normal bond and bitcoin spending the same amount of money and having strictly better returns in all circumstances.
And reportedly, nobody bought them[0].
I am not sure that emission scared investors, if anything, had someone showed up to buy them, it would have been free money fo the government.
That may be one factor, but not the only one. Someone had made graph of the bond prices and added the dates of some government actions and announcements. I'll try to post it below if I find it.
Salvadoran bonds reached their all time high after the Elections in March 2021, because investors expected stability with an officialist majority party in the local congress.
On the first session though. One of the first things the congress did was to change the Supreme Court and the Attorney General.
Did I say all that happened in just two hours, live, in a HD televised session with what I believe scripted dialogs. They even had crane cameras and rail cameras for cinematic effect.
Hard to explain. Just imagine C-SPAN turning from C-SPAN into a reality-show-contest production style. Laws (including your legal tender) being approved in 2 hours with no previous announcements. Sometimes at midnight too.
And let me get to the part when the interpretation of laws can change with a government's official tweet or tv appearance. Yes. Sometimes more than once a day. And sometimes the interpreted law being the opposite of the written law. Sometimes in a foreign language. Really. :)
Imagine living in a reality show where every major change in the plot is announced on Sunday at primetime. Except the reality show is your country. :)
Those changes started worrying bond investors. Many other things, good and bad, have happened ever since, too long to type in a comment.
In less than a year. The 2052 bonds went from an all time high to an all time low. [1]
> Did I say all that happened in just two hours, live, in a HD televised session with what I believe scripted dialogs. They even had crane cameras and rail cameras for cinematic effect.
It was a way to get around bond regulations, the bond is a wrapper around Bitcoin. It’s similar to how some companies buy MSTR because they are not allowed to buy Bitcoin directly, but want some exposure.
A pension fund might very well be allowed to buy junk bonds since it is a well-known if risky instrument whereas bitcoin ETFs are a newfangled weird instrument that is probably not covered by their guidelines.
I mean allowed in the sense that the investment guidelines set by the board allow it.
Source: I work at a pension fund where I think we are in precisely this situation.
I think in the next few years the pressure for junk bonds like this in pension funds will just grow as inflation rate moves farther away from bond yields.
You are correct that at the time of announcement, if you had believed in Bitcoin and El Salvador (for some reason) it would have been advantageous to simply buy - separately - Salvadoran sovereign debt on the capital markets and Bitcoin on the spot markets.
Did he persecute people like Pinochet did? Calling him a dictator is like having someone saying that misgendering them caused them PTSD: it is putting war induced trauma in the same bag as whatever misgendering is.
"Persecuting people like Pinochet" isn't really the bar.
I was alluding to the time he brought the military into the legislature to force through his 'crime package.' [1]
Belorussian leader Alexander Lukashenko refers to himself as the "last dictator in Europe" and I don't think he "persecutes people like Pinochet." He was also elected.
I have no idea who exactly is or isn't a dictator, but there is a Spanish word for the situation when a democratically or legally elected leader acquires dictatorial powers by breaking down institutions: it's called an "autogolpe" or self-coup.
I realize it happens outside of Central and South America, but it's suggestive that there's a specific word.
If you loan someone $100 and then find him going to vegas each weekend gambling $5 and spending the entire week boasting about what a genius he is and showing off his photos with his gambling friends, you will feel very uncomfortable loaning him more, even though his gambling habits are incrementally consuming a small portion of the loan you gave him.
> you will feel very uncomfortable loaning him more, even though his gambling habits are incrementally consuming a small portion of the loan you gave him.
So you are irrational and want to punish your client because of what hobby they pursue in their private/free time.
If their hobby is expensive enough to have an impact, then it does concern you, but if it is just "$5$" then it is none of your business if they spend it on ice cream, a gym or gambling.
You are taking the analogy too literally. Lending to a country/corporation is different to lending to a person. There is no such a thing as "free time" for a country. If the president wants to gamble his own wealth on bitcoin this is absolutely fine.
Further, you would be punishing him if he renounced his gambling addiction, but if he is still convinced that his gambling adventures is the right course of action to preserve and create wealth for his country then withholding fund is actually for his benefit.
> Lending to a country/corporation is different to lending to a person
> 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.
What does a President having "skin in the game" mean? That is the kind of talk you would make when talking about an investment. From the perspective of a sovereign nation, it's currency is not an investment. The goal of a currency isn't to provide maximum returns for people who hold that currency. In fact, from the perspective of a sovereign nation, an ideal currency is one that depreciates in value in a controlled manner. The fact that cryptocons don't even understand this simple fact is remarkable.
The NBA is a zero sum organization. There can only be 1 winner, and everyone else will be a loser. 1 team getting better than the others strictly means that the other teams are worse off. Nations and the world economy do not operate in a zero sum environment. Ukraine being attacked by Russia means nearly every country that relies on its produce and output are worse off. This is unlike the NBA where if suddenly every player in the Warrior's lineup got injured today, every other team would have a better chance of winning.
> 0 percent chance they had before their crypto actions.
Citation needed really really badly. There's a million things countries can do to improve their wealth. The one thing that is not gonna help them is investing in a speculative and highly volatile asset like crypto currencies.
> How much of a gamble is any action when you don't have much to lose?
As a Salvadoran it really hurts to read you describing everything we have there "not much to lose".
I mean. We are in the middle of most statistics in the world. It's not like we are in the bottom for everything. Perhaps crime, but that's been improving for the past 5 years.
1) Reality is not always pleasant or politically correct. It is not my desire to be insulting, but at the same time, it's hard to have a discussion about real world events and and not say some things that some people might prefer not to hear. Some feelings might be hurt, but the world would be better off if more frank discussions were had.
2) If I understand this right, a short time ago in this very thread, you posted that El Salvador lost Visa Free Travel to the UK due to 17x increase in asylum requests. Again, I'm not trying to be insulting, but that's the kind of data point that tells a lot of the story about the state and direction of a country.
3) Let me add that I genuinely want El Salvador to do well: it's in your country's and my own best interest.
4) Nobody can 100% predict the future, but I think your president has given your people the absolute best chance they have at prospering, even if it will take some time to materialize. Even if Bitcoin never truly moons, establishing your country as a crypto friendly jurisdiction seems like a far-sighted move that most people won't really understand the long-term benefits until a long time later.
5) I'm sure you understand El Salvador far better than most people. If I've said any facts you think are incorrect, I always invite correction or clarification. I'd definitely be interested on what specific things you think your country can do to improve the long-term outlook other than providing generic platitudes about doing better in crime or education.
> Let me add that I genuinely want El Salvador to do well: it's in your country's and my own best interest.
Me too.
> Establishing your country as a crypto friendly jurisdiction seems like a far-sighted move that most people won't really understand the long-term benefits until a long time later.
I don't work directly with law, but El Salvador is becoming an an increasingly complicated jurisdiction to work in.
There have been more than a handful contradictions between written law, tweets, and government official declarations.
Doing business, in a country with conflicting interpretations of law is complicated, wether plain old business or crypto.
Laws changing on Sunday evenings, optimized for social media engagement instead of business hours. Or laws coming onto force before they are officially published.
Tweets or government official declarations used as an official 'interpretation' of law. Sometimes the interpretation being close to the opposite of what the law states. Who to believe? The interview, the tweet, the written law, the supreme court?
This confusion permeates everything. From complex stuff:
Like for the past months, a big pension reform has been announced. No drafts available of course. Will the individual pension accounts be nationalized? (Equivalent to the US IRA/401k/Employer contributions) There's no public info about that.
To the day to day stuff:
If the police detains someone and posts their picture on and convicts you for 20 years in prison in twitter. Is the tweet a valid conviction or not? I don't know. Judgement via social media?
Can police stop someone and check their phone? Yes
Have people been sent to prison for not carrying a phone? Yes
Have people been sent to prison for a 20 second TikTok video using the 'wrong' background song? Yes.
Can a business be taken over by the government? Yes, it happened at least once. It didn't even follow a normal law process and was a very confusing procedure with conflicting official declarations.
Can the police force the door open while a couple is in a 'love hotel' with your gf/bf and post their picture in social media, in underwear, your car, license plate, or your ID card? It has happened before too. Security checks.
Will having the wrong local rap song in the Spotify history send someone to prison? Probably.
Thanks for sharing. I can see some of this stuff unfortunately being true, but some of it sounds pretty ridiculous and I'd guess might be embellished a little.
That being said, is some of this justice system stuff being worked on? I think your president was focusing on crime issues in addition to the crypto stuff, but I don't really follow all of the El Salvador news too closely.
The interpretation being close to the opposite of what the law states, for example the reinterpretation of the constitution regarding consecutive reelection:
The point of analogy is that it's very different from the actual issue. In fact, an analogy will always be different from the real situation, otherwise it wouldn't be an analogy, it would be the thing in itself.
There is nothing contradictory in using an analogy to illustrate a specific point (in this case, how a lender may be hesitant to lend something to a borrower even if the borrower acted unwisely with a small part of the money that was lent to them), and pointing out that the analogy is not the same as the actual situation.
Yes, I'm aware of all that. But when you pick an analogy, you should pick one that helps your case, not where the central dynamics are opposite from or incomparable to the dynamic you're trying to illustrate.
If you don't believe that loaning to a human is analogous to loaning to a country, you really shouldn't be the one introducing it as an analogy!
The purpose of an analogy is to more clearly convey a dynamic, not muddle understanding by reference to a case with the opposite implications.
In the likely event that it still isn't clear what's wrong with ak_111's points, let's review.
"People are obviously going to be reluctant to lend to <country> because <country> is behaving like a human who spent his money frivolously after borrowing your money again. Because you would not continue to lend to that human, you can see why others would not lend to <country>."
"Okay, you misunderstood my analogy. You can't conclude anything about countries based on how you would handle a human. The situations are completely unrelated, to the point that it is impossible to reason about one from knowledge of the other."
Am I the one who doesn't understand analogies, or is ak_111?
>> ...the government had purchased nearly $25 million worth of bitcoin...
> Dont think the losing of bitcoin value can be blamed in case of default
Volatility makes it difficult to represent the true economic impact of this situation. From scarce and needlessly secret information, their bitcoin holdings were worth over $100M earlier this year[0], a consequential portion of the repayment. More importantly, while they have historically claimed that they would always “buy the dip”, there is no indication of when they sold, and a few indications that they have turned a loss on the investment so far.
Meanwhile, the payments are due at fixed periods, which may force them to sell unfavourably. A year after the 2018 high, it was at a fourth of its high value. What they now consider “dips” may well be seen as highs then.
Plus, their policies have an effect on the rest. In short, they don’t have a strong case on finding financing apart from their crypto bet[1]:
> The downgrade of El Salvador's rating is driven in good part by the lack of a credible financing plan
which they would need, to cover their worsening position[2]:
> The government faces only USD305 million in external debt amortizations in 2022, but faces close to USD1.2 billion in 2023
> El Salvador will likely face a funding gap of about 1% of GDP
Bukele showed up in the latter stages of a bull market and thought he was a genius that had discovered a money making machine. Just like Saylor and Elon. It happens every cycle. They will all be tested. No one gets through the door easily. The genius was ignoring recency bias and buying BTC at the bottom at 3k in 2018 and selling your coins to Elon last year.
The amount Bukele bought is tiny. Bitcoin and crypto are a threat to the IMF system. They aren’t going to like it when you do that. To survive without the IMF, you would have to go all in at a generational bottom. That did not happen.
> Bitcoin and crypto are a threat to the IMF system. They aren’t going to like it when you do that. To survive without the IMF, you would have to go all in at a generational bottom. That did not happen.
In the large scale, El Salvador's BTC fund is not that big.
I mean, El Salvador has more IMF shares than Bitcoins in their fund.
- El Salvador Bitcoin: 74 million USD [2]
- El Salvador IMF shares: 402 million USD (207 million SDRs) [1]
> Bitcoin and crypto are a threat to the IMF system. They aren’t going to like it when you do that. To survive without the IMF, you would have to go all in at a generational bottom. That did not happen.
I see this conspiracy theory thrown somewhat often, but it has the same substance than any qanon-type "they" story.
Meanwhile, supporters of this conspiracy theory fail to explain why adopting a highly volatile and manipulation-prone asset as a nation's legal tender is not a completely brain-dead belief, as it fails any of the basic properties of money.
Another detail that btc conspiracy theorists fail to mention is how every single concern expressed by the IMF regarding El Salvador's Bitcoin push was already proven right.
But crypto-bros hand-wave around the subject and it never ceases to be fool-proof.
A 2% speculative investment in an emerging technology is a drop in the bucket compared to what El Salvador has been through in the past 30 years, with multiple past presidents arrested or fleeing the country following corruption charges.
By multiple verifiable metrics(homicide rate, covid response, gdp growth) El Salvador is in a far better place now than it's been in decades.
> For perspective, the previous president of El Salvador is in exile for his alleged role in the embezzlement of $300+ million.
All of those cases were discovered and judged thanks to:
a) The separation of the Executive/Legislative/Judicial powers
b) The Public Access Information Law.
c) The help of independent journalism
I don't agree with removing the checks and balances that helped discovered these cases in the first place.
The first two a) and b) have been dismantled by the current administration in the past year.
The third, c), independent journalism, is constantly under attack from government and allied media outlets and influencers.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Head of Congress told the independent press "to go away". This happened live, on the podium, while presiding a session.
Quoting what the Head of Congress said:
"Ask for asylum. Get asylum and go way Go away. You don't contribute anything here.... We don't need you. Go away. "
> A 2% speculative investment in an emerging technology is a drop in the bucket compared to what El Salvador has been through in the past 30 years, with multiple past presidents arrested or fleeing the country following corruption charges.
That's an extremely generous and charitable interpretation.
El Salvador's investment in btc is hardly relevant with regards to it's nominal cost. It is however significant in the impact it has on El Salvador being able to refinance it's sovereign debt and earn trust in the country's institutions.
Trying to argue that today's sad state of affairs is not that bad because some point in the past the state of affairs was also sad is not a path forward.
Please, the phrasing is obviously meant to make the reader jump to conclusions.
The headline wasn't "El Salvador expected to default as Hacker News readers bicker about wording", even if that would have been equally true (and relevant?).
i know this will get downvoted heavily, but considering how rapidly fiat currencies are loosing value, I'd say the investment in bitcoin is an excellent long term bet and even by jan 2023, likely to look good. history will judge.
How do you figure? The price of gold today in USD is up 4.4% of where it was from the highs 10 years ago. That's not indicative of a fiat currency rapidly losing value.
If you consider the price of gold today vs. where it was at its lowest point over the previous 10 years (USD had most value, just before Trump took office) then gold has gone up 42.76% (meaning the USD has lost considerable value since 2016). You can look at the charts and see when the trade war started with China and see when the Pandemic hit. Even so, since Biden has been in office the USD has been gaining in value (as measured by gold) and given the action of the Fed last week it will gain even more value (in fact that's been the financial news the past few weeks - the USD gaining value). Again this doesn't support the claim that fiat currencies are rapidly losing value.
i calculated the average increase of roughly 7%-8% for the last 20 years, according to the site you mentioned (+490% over 20 years). And, you look at inflation of almost anything from housing to gas, most of it averaged 4-4.5%. We hardly need a basket of goods to average across anymore since most of people's earning now go to housing, at least for the latest generation. Case shiller shows housing was already going up at 4% per year on average for the last 20 years, and that was before the pandemic. So, yeah, the dollar and all the other fiats, for the last 20 years have been crashing at least 4% per year. and the CPI, as it was calculating using the older methods (before congress told them to start under-reporting inflation) can confirm this. You can find out all about this on http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts if you read all the foot notes you can find out inflation measurements have changed in order to under report it.
So, we had at least 4% pre pandemic and now closer to 10-11% (real CPI as reported on shadowstats, is always about 2% higher than the fake BLS numbers) per year though it looks like it will diminish.
So, yeah, the dollar and all the other fiats, for the last 20 years have been crashing at least 4% per year.
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).
there's already a vast oversupply of investment money chasing far too few opportunities: take a look at the s&p500, it's only returning 1.3% dividends. that tells you PE ratios are through the roof and that there's too much capital chasing too few opportunities. so, there's no need to "encourage investment and spending".
Society would have a lot to gain from a government that didn't default on it's obligation of "money as a store of value". there's a large need for store of value, especially with the aging population.
Money is most emphatically not a store of value and hasn't been in over 100 years nor do you want it to be. Hoarded money has little value to an economy. What you want money to do is be used to build or expand manufacturing, build or expand shipping infrastructure, communications infrastructure, expand agriculture, and so forth and so on. "Investment" is a much broader term than just buying equities. Do something with your money! As I said, there's even a parable about this.
The real reason for the risk of default is that El Salvador was counting on a loan from the IMF and the IMF refused to make a loan to El Salvador while Bitcoin is legal currency. Despite his misadventures with Bitcoin, President Bukele is wildly popular in El Salvador.
> real reason for the risk of default is that El Salvador was counting on a loan from the IMF and the IMF refused to make a loan to El Salvador while Bitcoin is legal currency
El Salvador's dollar bonds started crashing right after the Bitcoin announcement, before the IMF bailed; Bukele had already snubbed the IMF six months before when he "fired five top judges and the attorney general" [1].
> Bukele is wildly popular in El Salvador
This is correct [2]. I'm not certain how this makes me feel about supporting them when this inevitably fails.
This is inaccurate. The IMF and other entities do not give aid or loans to dictatorships, because anything given to a dictatorship goes straight to the cronies at the top.
El Salvador started having this problem as Bukele eliminated other branches of government. That's why he pushed Bitcoin adoption in the first place - to work around the problems caused by his desired form of government.
LOL they lend to democracies in third world countries like mine where the money goes straight to the cronies at the top (Panama; I know the term is outdated but us third-worlders call our countries third-world).
My wife worked for a Ministry here and saw how the world bank shoved loans on non-functioning institutions and charged my country interest ON THE AVAILABLE FUNDS (like a credit line but it doesn't matter if you use it or not) despite them being executed or not.
I dont know wtf these people are doing, but benevolent they are not.
Yes, the IMF exemplifies the folly of global institutions. How long have they propped up kleptocracies like Argentina? "Democracy" is just a nice coat of paint over unbelievably corrupt countries where citizens will never see a dime of those loans yet will have to bear the burden of paying them back.
They are predators, they are usually eyeing the conversion of these loans into assets (which will be bought cheaply) once the country defaults.
> and charged my country interest ON THE AVAILABLE FUNDS
That's actually fair. The problem is that many countries lack the capacity to satisfy the conditions and requirements for unlocking such funds. My understanding (and you can correct me if you have more accurate fact), is that the WB pass this interest to the relevant country rather than charge it for profit. Since the money was allocated by the institutions, they expect yield whether it is deployed or not. Obviously, the WB is not going to bear that cost.
From my perspective it's a pretty complicated question. Like loans can be very beneficial if they are used to make sensible investments. So that's a good reason to give them out. But as you mention if it just goes straight into the private pockets of bad people that's not good. But realistically it's never so black and white. Some money will be used for sensible investments, some will be used to build a giant statue of the leader, a third part to cousins, and a fourth to buy votes. So it's a question, is a sufficent proportion used for good? And also is the leader legitimate? If a leader is very impopular then we may say the he cannot take loans on his people's behalf, that the people are not bound by any agreements he makes.
But anyway I'm curious about your thoughts, what is the alternative? How would a better system look like?
IMO a bureaucrat shouldn't be able to put an institution in debt.
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.
My comment comes from a rude awakening I had: I thought these institutions and their bureaucrats we're well-meaning people. Naively, I thought 'hey if you work at a place like that what other motive do you have but to help?'.
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.
I think the point is that the cronies at the top took the loan on behalf of the country. They don't care that the terms of the loan are bad because they will personally get rich either way and paying back the loan is somebody else's problem.
Because 'my country' isn't a conscious entity. The people inside the institutions are cronies of current senators.
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).
> The IMF and other entities do not give aid or loans to dictatorships
This is wrong. The IMF, USA, and Europe deal with dictators on a regular basis.
> because anything given to a dictatorship goes straight to the cronies at the top.
That's funny because the opposite happened where I live.
> El Salvador started having this problem as Bukele eliminated other branches of government. That's why he pushed Bitcoin adoption in the first place - to work around the problems caused by his desired form of government.
El Salvador had an astronomical crime rate, and bad finances long before Bukele. It's unlikely that Bukele (or a single man) can eliminate anything in the government or a democratic system. What happens is these system collapses and Bukele is just the symptom of it.
> What happens is these system collapses and Bukele is just the symptom of it.
You mean the corrupt criminal network in El Salvador somehow collapsed because of inexplicable reasons? The collapse is not even to some degree the effect of intentional political changes?
I guess it depends on what is your criteria for "dictatorship", but afaik they _love_ to give loans specifically to dictators. Because they know that the dictators agree on much worse terms as they not the ones who would repay the dept.
First, El Salvador is not a dictatorship. President Bukele and his party won in a free election and everyone expects he will win re-eelection in 2024.
Second, no branch of government has been eliminated. What happened is that his party impeached the justices on their supreme court, replacing them with justices from his party. In fact, "packing" the court, the same thing leftists are urging the Democrats to do in the USA.
Third, the claim that the IMF does not lend to dictators is obviously untrue.
If either party in the US somehow managed to impeach the entire Supreme Court and replace the judges with partisans, it sounds fair to say that a branch of government has been eliminated.
Didn’t Bukele also declare martial law? That’s another traditional tool on the way to a dictatorship.
And also forced retirement for experienced officials in many government instutions, including the Ministry of Education [1], Judges [2], and Police [3].
> Despite his misadventures with Bitcoin, President Bukele is wildly popular in El Salvador.
He seems to have successfully controlled crime in El Salvador. Usually, there is something behind these strong men if they are still popular. Homicide is down from 103 in 2015 to 17.6 last year. People will stick with such figure; it's not clear why previous rulers have failed. 103 is scary as shit number. Bitcoin will look like a blip in his mishaps from the citizenry point of view.
From the papers they released, I don't think they are. But this is an institution that works with SDR [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_drawing_rights]; so they are not going to "understand" Bitcoin. In a sense, they have their own Bitcoin.
And I put understand in quotes because the IMF does get Bitcoin, Crypto and finance better than most countries. They understand that crypto is mostly bad news for weak countries because they are already having trouble with capital outflow as is.
> This paper studies the potential of a cryptocurrency to become a medium of exchange. We use evidence from a natural experiment: In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to make bitcoin legal tender, and all economic agents were required to accept bitcoin for all payments. The Salvadorean government also launched an app, “Chivo Wallet,” which allowed users to digitally trade both bitcoin and dollars, and gave major incentives to download it. We conduct a representative national face-to-face survey to obtain information on bitcoin’s usage and effects. Leveraging this data, we document how, despite the government’s “big push” and a large fraction of people downloading Chivo Wallet, usage of bitcoin for everyday transactions is low and is concentrated among the banked, educated, young, and male population. We also estimate the fixed cost of adopting the new payment technology, the importance of strategic complementarities for users, and the elasticity of substitution between mobile payments and other payment methods.
,, The firm added that debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rise to 86.9% in 2022, “increasing concerns around debt sustainability over the medium term.”
As a comparision US debt to GDP ratio is 133%
Also forex reserves is 3.4B, I don’t see why it would be impossible to pay $800M
Probably because it would be just a sticky plaster. You want to hold on that liquidity for survival, particularly in a situation where you can't borrow anymore - so at least you can keep the lights on by paying cash for the essential transactions (petrol, food, etc).
> As a comparision US debt to GDP ratio is 133%
The bigger and wealthier the country is, the more markets are willing to cut them some slack. Japan is at 263%, France 112%, etc etc. It's something of a fraud but that's how it is. Capital markets are often very bigoted, to be charitable.
It’s not just that, if you issue debt in a currency you control you can theoretically never default, you can just keep devaluing your currency to pay off previous debts. El Salvador has two currencies right now and they control neither of them.
It’s about risk. US debt is sustainable because bond holders trust them to effectively manage their economy so that they can pay them back. Are you seriously suggesting that not trusting the Salvadorian government to the same extent is fraudulent, or bigoted? Would you trust them? If so and you’re right, then you should make a killing investing in their bonds given the return rates.
Even better, a majority of Japan's government debt is owed to the Japanese Government. Through the Japan Central Bank.
The remainder is owed to Japanese citizens and corporations. The remainder no doubt held by other central banks.
Meanwhile the prefectures and towns are not allowed to carry net debt. Granted various accounting tricks and lots of weirdness exists. Including a scheme where the federal government skips paying towns their transfer payments and instead tells them to borrow "on the federal government's behalf". This "favour debt" is then not reported as proper debt as the federal government has promised to pay the missing transfer payments, sometime, in the future.
It's a useful budgeting tool. It's not like there is one "government bank account" that every agency and bureaucrat shares.
In the US, agencies can end up with surplus cash (either taxes were higher than needed, or budgets were off, etc). Agencies will buy T bonds with this excess cash to transfer it back to the Treasuries general fund, so it can be reallocated. The T bonds that the agency now holds are far from "meaningless".
From a thousand foot view, the government is one homogenous entity. But that perspective breaks down pretty quickly in the real world. It's pretty easy to find Intragovernmental debt stats and subtract that from the total, if you are so inclined.
Usually, people are concern with the total liability of a government. You can't dismiss intragovernmental debt in this calculation.
I understand that it is an accounting tool. But the function in the economy is totally different.
The case you mention is basically an ability for different departments to earn some interest on unspent budgets and that's fine. Its basically some bureaucracy level budget adjustment mechanism.
However on a state budget and state central bank level the interest paying part of the Bond is not relevant.
And when comparing how large governments debt% is, to have a useful metric for practical purposes those bonds should be removed.
The Central Bank would need to sell that debt on the open market to quell inflation so it is still relevant. If the debt is high enough that it constrains the central banks ability to manage inflation without causing default either high inflation or massive private debt default are inevitable in the long run.
The only “out” is a miraculous increase in future productivity or an increasing percentage of working age adults that increase GDP to make it sustainable. Of course in the long run we are all dead.
It’s not a fraud it’s a reaction to the total level of assets the sovereign holds and their ability to get more. Needless to say the countries you mention considerably outpace El Salvador in this department.
El Salvador doesn't have a currency, they operate in US dollars, a consequence of US's Neocolonial situation on the region, they are de facto a sorts of "economic colony"
As a Salvadoran here. Using the USD is a great advantage. I'd rather be paid in USD than in any other Latin American currency.
Every country is different. But would we, in the particular case of El Salvador, be better if we operated in another currency?
- The USD is the currency of our main trade partner and the currency of the 30% of Salvadorans that live in the US. Our remittances don't incurre in expensive foreign exchange.
- Less Foreign Exchange risk, compared to what Colombians, Chileans, Argentina or Mexicans experience.
- We also have lower interest rates than many bigger Latin American economies.
- Most Latin American currencies have been devalued in the past years. With few exceptions like the Guatemalan Quetzal. I've heard about the Cuban Peso Convertible and the Panama Balboa too but those are pegged to the dollar anyways. Or French Guyana and some Caribbean islands which use the Euro perhaps.
The US only issues bonds in its own currency, which makes a massive difference.
Foreign-denominated debt is a huge trap for developing countries. Some more conspiratorial folk would say that’s intentional (to take their natural resources by making them indebted, buying their resource exports and then they have to pay much of that revenue back to you as interest).
A quarter of your forex reserves in the short term means a potential issue in the medium term. The US obviously has a lot more ability to pay US dollar denominated debts...
The problem is that cryptocurrency behaves nothing like a fiat currency. There's a reason putting your entire savings in straight cash is not a good idea: Fiat currency doesn't fluctuate the same way because it's not meant to be an investment vehicle. The main goal of currency is to facilitate value exchange. Crypto is the opposite, by prioritizing value gains over value exchange functionality.
Using crypto to buy goods works OK when the price is relatively stable, but as soon as it makes big movement, lots of vendors stop accepting it. Crypto acts more like (and increasingly moves like) stocks, where investors buy in hoping to profit by converting crypto back into cash the same way stocks are sold.
This guy seriously wanted to sell El Salvador's remaining gold reserve to buy bitcoin with it only a few months ago. Not sure how his population put up with him.
But is it plummeting? I'd be the first to cheer, but I only see some of the usual fluctuation that's the closest thing BTC has to stability. Is that's enough to send them into default, the entire thing has been nothing but a last ditch hail mary pass of the kind that, below state level, is usually countered by bankruptcy laws that are written precisely to keep stuff like that from happening.
It's plummeting every time :) As much as I don't like the "don't look at this (this week's chart), look at this (last 2 years chart)" meme, it really applies each time there's a crypto crash reported by every news site. Still, we recovered every time. Let's see how the price is going in 3 months.
You 'recover' only if you have the luxury of not needing to sell during the downturn. By that metric, no major stock index has ever gone down except for Japan's Nikkei, which never again reached its 1990 peaks.
El Salvador has an $800m bond repayment due in Jan 2023. You can't make repayments in crypto, so some of their securities holdings will need to be sold in order to make payments. You might not feel the market downturn, but they certainly will.
Literally nothing? Every time there's a hiccup I see plenty of people frantically engaging in a propaganda effort as if their life savings depended on it.
What was the impetus behind El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin? The bill seems to have been introduced by President Nayib Bukele, whose background is law.
This recent story [1] about bitcoin being pushed by fishy operatives in Catalonia is what got me curious.
The story is only tangentially related to BTC. The article could eliminate all mention of crypto without any information loss. It's only included for the clicks.
> In a statement, Fitch explained: “The downgrade reflects heightened financing risks stemming from increased reliance on short-term debt, a $800 million Eurobond repayment due in January 2023, a still-high fiscal deficit, limited scope for additional local market financing, uncertain access to additional multilateral funding and external market financing given high borrowing costs.”
Following through to the linked statement:
> In Fitch's view, weakening of institutions and concentration of power in the presidency have increased policy unpredictability, and the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender has added uncertainty about the potential for an IMF program that would unlock financing for 2022-2023.
So it's not just the exchange rate volatility that's at issue, but the possibility that the IMF will make good on its warnings and not backstop the country until its bitcoin venture ends. That, and the other political stuff, combine to make the country look more risky to creditors.
Later in the Fitch article:
> The recently published IMF Article IV recommends a fiscal adjustment of 4pp of GDP to put the debt burden on a steady downward path, strengthening the medium-term fiscal framework, improvements in governance in reporting and audits, implementing revised anti- money laundering laws, and removing bitcoin as legal tender while improving regulation and oversight of the virtual currency system.
Probably a group of government officials earned significantly from these and if the country goes default most of the pain will be on the ordinary citizens, sadly.
Almost 1/4 of El Salvador GDP is remittances. The point of Bitcoin for them is that there is now a Bitcoin-based money transfer system they can use with no fees. The reduction in fees to the countries citizens should dwarf the country's losses from holding bitcoin. All of which is a minor amount compared to their actual bond repayment amount (which has nothing to do with Bitcoin). A better title might be: the IMF demands El Salvador gets rid of Bitcoin before refinancing its loans.
Edit: Adding this addendum to reply to commenters themes.
These Bitcoin-based transfers are not on the Bitcoin blockchain but instead actually happening on the Lightning network- the transfer fee is close to zero.
In addition to the fees of traditional remittances, there are sometimes additional significant inconveniences- for example some have to travel by bus to the city where the Western Union is located.
The current extended Bitcoin drawdown probably doesn't effect things much. Users generally convert their BTC to dollars in the Chivo wallet app the country uses to avoid the volatility.
Despite all the theoretical advantage for remittances, adoption for remittances is still very low, with 11% ever using the app for this. It may be in part because using the government app means the remittances are known to the government and can be taxed as income, whereas cash goes unreported. https://www.howtogeek.com/801982/bitcoin-is-legal-tender-in-...
> point of bitcoin for them is that there is now a bitcoin based money transfer system they can use with no fees
There is zero coïncidence in El Salvador and the Central African Republic, nos. 115 and 154 on the corruption perceptions index [1], having implemented Bitcoin as legal tender with zero transparency around the holding wallets.
Best case: it isn’t outright embezzlement but facilitating graft.
How is the implementation of the lightning protocol used locally by El Salvador (if any) is of any help when transferring money from the US to El Salvador ?
It's not as if bitcoin was free either … There's transaction fees, the exchange's margin, and the local broker's margin (because yes, many of these people can't just use an exchange by themselves to cash-out their bitcoins).
Also, I'd be curious if you had source about the “every day” part, because I find it pretty unlikely, since it's costly, time consuming (the cheapest way to send money is going in physical stores), and people aren't usually earning money every day …
I don’t know anyone who sends remittances daily. Most send a portion of their paycheck so weekly or biweekly. And many people I know batch those payments to reduce fees so they send monthly.
The problem is that sending in Bitcoin is more expensive than WU.
You've just posted an opinion about bitcoin without backing it up with facts. I'll happily engage if you post credible, verifiable facts that backup your claims about Bitcoin.
Western union starts at 10% for transactions below $100, but it can be as low as a $8 flat fee for a thousand bucks if you pay cash in store.
Bitcoin isn't cheaper than this, because not only there's blockchain fees, but also exchange's, and I'm pretty sure many people use a local broker for managing their bitcoins (at least it's how it works in Lebanon, from what I've read).
> Despite all the theoretical advantage for remittances, adoption for remittances is still very low, with 11% ever using the app for this.
An issue that Salvadorans in the U.S. face when they want to fund their Chivo Wallets to send to their family is that they charged a Foreign Transaction Fee by their U.S. banks. This happens because the Chivo card transaction is processed in El Salvador and most Salvadorans in the U.S. don't have debit/credit cards that refund Foreign Transaction fees. Depending on the bank they may be about 3% and they add up for larger transactions.
Btw Salvadoran banks don't charge foreign transaction for purchases abroad. So these fees are something we rarely think about, and came as a surprise to many :D
Or they would have to take a bus or drive to a Salvadoran consulate in the U.S. to use a US Chivo ATM. The time that would take plus transportation costs wouldnt make it a cheap option either.
> It may be in part because using the government app means the remittances are known to the government
This seems incorrect. El Salvador has very strict transaction reporting laws.
1. Every remittance is reported in El Salvador. Every one of them. In a very detailed way. To at least three government institutions. Central Bank, Financial Investigation Unit and Tax Office.
> and can be taxed as income,
2. Transfers between family members are not considered taxable income according to the Tax Code. It's on the first pages of the Income Tax Law: Article 3, Paragraph 3.
> whereas cash goes unreported.
El Salvador tracks cash transactions.
Even paying the $2.29 water bill in coins requires an ID.
Other commerces have a higher reporting thresholds, like +$100/$200 in supermarkets and clothing stores.
Many cashiers are trained to ask for an ID even for lower purchases to activate product warranty and loyalty programs.
That's just your privilege talking. If you were a poor El Salvadoran, you'd be thankful to the tech gods to wait a year for your bitcoin purchase to recover its value in order to dodge an $8 Western Union fee (and pay a bitcoin transaction fee.)
To be honest, every time I heard about Bitcoin plummeting, buying the dip would still net you 3x, 4x gains in a year. We'll see how it goes here, but I wouldn't be surprised if after a series of "Is Bitcoin dying?" articles we'll see it bounce back again.
Bitcoin is the biggest troll on the planet. A nerdy idea that took hold because druggies found it convenient to use and then it became "mainstream" and an "asset" and an "investment", with people putting their life savings because they "believe it is going to go up".
Its actually a reflection on the current state of society, all the materialism and irrationality personified. The greed, the "hustle", a modern incarnation of snake oil.
Do you know why El Salvador adopted BitCoin? Previously they used the US dollar as their currency, because no one had any faith in a Salvadoran currency, even their own citizens. But doing this is basically meant that ES was paying tribute to the US, since the dollar continually loses value as more are created. US citizens at least get some benefit when the government prints trillions of dollars, in the form of government handouts; ES residents just get screwed.
On a Bitcoin standard, instead of sponsoring the US, wouldn't El Salvador just sponsor early/current Bitcoin holders instead?
Replacing one currency not under the government's control with another doesn't seem to achieve all that much, and arguably, picking a deflationary currency at that might be much worse.
Serious question, why don't people have faith in the El Salvadoran currency? Why don't they try to fix the problems that are causing that lack of faith?
Notice that the same government that apparently can't be trusted to manage a currency is also in charge of the police and the military. So the government can't be trusted when it comes to currency, but it can be trusted with administering state violence... makes a lot of sense.
Government handouts are decided by Congress. Monetary policy is set by the Fed. Fed issuing more currency doesn't change the number on your unemployment check.
The downside of using the USD as a local currency is that the local central bank cannot set its own lending rates (markets will set rates at what the larger dollarized economy in the US is at) and has less control over monetary policy.
I think El Salvador adopted Bitcoin because their president believes it's going to the moon and adopting it will make everyone rich. He's repeatedly talked about "buying the dip", for example, but there's no obvious reason why El Salvador would want or need to buy the dip if they weren't hoping to benefit from future price increases.
If it was only druggies, that'd be great, cuz it'd be relatively confined, really. But I don't think that can explain the ridiculous valuations on its own. It's clear there are far larger parties than just drug trafficking and hobbyists and crypto-promoters and "retail investors".
My guess is large movements of capital out of places like Iran, China, and Russia.
My hypothesis is that people in the drug trade and other illicit industries (hacking for hire, etc.) are the ones who initially gave Bitcoin its early value - much lower than it is today, but above close-to-zero. Then, the general public noticed this new class of appreciating asset, and that’s when the price really started to go up.
Yes you're exactly right. Wealthy Chinese can purchase mining hardware and electricity using the local funny money, then sell the resulting Bitcoins for actual hard currency. The Chinese authorities have been cracking down but it's hard to stop completely.
I think it's more than they're leaving it in bitcoin. For now this is more secure than leaving it in local accounts where the predatory State has access to it, or where it can be confined by sanctions, etc.
Later... someday or sooner... throw it through few a mixers, pass it around a few times, and, sure, it could become capital again, or convert to another currency, or stick it in real estate. But there's no need for that at this point. In some places the risk of losing 80% of it to the fluctuations of kleptocoins is actually better than the political risk, or the potential taxation burden.
Yea, except compare the ease, cost, and time of bank wiring your family $5000 to get out of a country where a war started and sending BTC. Something crypto nay-sayers conveniently ignore.
And the crypto bros conveniently ignore that you can’t easily exchange your BTC for actual cash to buy real things without an exchange or a bank account.
Is that actually realistic? I clicked through Ukraine and couldn't find an ATM to sell BTC. Crypto requires the same assumptions of stability once you want to turn it into something real.
You are not wiring $5000, you adding a new event to a globally-replicated Event Store database, while other people and entities are speculating on theses events using real money, money surrogates, and/or electricity.
Exactly. I understand the value of the Blockchain, as a distributed, albeit inefficient, ledger of transactions that are anonymous and hard to destroy.
But here we have a country, millions of peoples hard work and assets being converted to bitcoin. How exactly does demonstrate critical thinking, planning or heck, even a plan?
Baudrillard strikes again. The entirety of Bitcoin's value is prestige - it has value by being associated with people who are trusted when they say it has value.
I can't really understand how a post by El País can make it to hacker news. El país is a disinformation newspaper full of manipulation and indoctrination controlled by governments. At least this is the case in Spain, do reading this newspaper is just killing your brain
Someone killing their baby with their drug habit is a bit different than the El Salvador case where an abortion was needed to save the mothers life.
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.
> Had she gotten an abortion, she wouldn't have charges.
That, to me, is kind of the whole point.
If you decide your dog is old and sick and you take it to the vet to be put down, you've done the right thing.
If you decide your dog is old sick, so you starve him to death, you deserve to go to jail for animal abuse.
(At least for now) we have a way of dealing with unwanted pregnancy. Abusing / neglecting your fetus because you don't want it, but not getting an abortion, is clearly immoral IMO.
Whether drug use constitutes abuse, and whether she deserve jail time for it, are more complicated and nuanced questions.
You're wrong - she didn't "[kill her] baby with [her] drug habit"
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 whole thing is absurd because in Oklahoma it's perfectly legal to purposefully abort a 17 week old fetus (for now).
A fetus is not a play thing with zero moral consideration. You can put your dog down at the vet given appropriate circumstances. That doesn't give you the right to abuse, neglect, and kill your dog arbitrarily.
Marshae Jones never went to trial, the prosecutors dropped the case.
Katherine Dellis went to jail because she threw the body of her dead child in the garbage bin. It had nothing to do with how the baby died (miscarriage). You can't just chuck dead family members into a dumpster.
It's not that much of a stretch to think women could be convicted for using alcohol or tobacco, or eventually for any reason the right wants.
Anti-abortion laws could also make doctors wary of treating women for miscarriages, lest they be accused of actually inducing abortion [2]. Women could also easily be falsely accused of breaking anti-abortion laws when they have a miscarriage ("you didn't have a miscarriage, you were perfectly healthy!" etc, despite many perfectly healthy women having many miscarriages). This is all but a guarantee, as people are already being denied care due to this issue.
Unfortunately you are incorrect even though I wish you were right.
"Of the 22 states with abortion bans that will instantly take effect if the landmark Supreme Court ruling is overturned, 10 have passed laws that make no exceptions for rape or incest: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas."
Having to carry a rapists child to term would likely cause some level of psychological trauma. Psychological trauma is a valid medical reason for attaining a medical marijuana use case in many states. So I would argue that state level governments have already accepted psychological trauma as a medical need.
It's not hyperbole - an induced abortion ("chemical abortion") is identical, medically, to a spontaneous abortion ("miscarriage"). 25% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. When abortion is a crime then any person experiencing a miscarriage is a suspected criminal. If someone experiencing a miscarriage is unlikable enough, weird enough, or ever expressed any doubts about their pregnancy to anyone else, then a prosecutor can just assume that person must have caused their miscarriage. There's no way to disprove any specific action didn't contribute to a miscarriage.
When you criminalize abortion you criminalize miscarriages. Not every miscarriage, but definitely some.
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.
Despite the link in the article, these appear to be two different women -- referred to as "Elsy" and "Esme" -- one who was sentenced 10 years ago, the other who was sentenced last week.
That's a ~20 year old case(that was misrepresented anyway) and ultimately has nothing to do with the current administration and its Btc experiment/gamble. The current political party in power didn't exist then and neither of the two incumbent parties campaigned on changing abortion laws so it's unlikely to have changed. Let he whose country has not spent a century sponsoring arbitrary regime change cast the first stone.
That's tragic and a shame but I can't find any info in Spanish or English on the case itself, the charges or the ruling, just a bunch of articles quoting a single statement by her defense lawyer.
To be fair: this type of problem is present in most countries where religion is a major part of society and government. I can list a dozen other countries with strong religious backdrops where abortion laws are oppressive in the eyes of most humanists.
America, with their recent Roe vs Wade discussion is close to getting on that list.
It’s a very white European version of “humanism” that treats reproduction as inconvenient baggage that gets in the way of individual self fulfillment instead of sanctifying it as core to the human experience.
Considering the millions of people fleeing to the US and EU every year- including many from El Salvador- I would say the marketplace of ideas has spoken.
Considering that the white European populations of both those places are in decline, and they’re utterly reliant on those migrants, it sounds like the marketplace has also said something about the sustainability of different belief systems.
If the “humanist” standard is Roe v. Wade, as stated above, then most of asia doesn’t meet the standard. Abortion in Asia tends to be viewed more though a population control lens than an individualist “humanist” lens as is the case in the west. The main exception is probably India, which was heavily influenced by British colonization, and the former Soviet bloc or Soviet aligned countries.
My dad spent the first part of his career in public health family planning (I.e. making sure there weren’t too many Bangladeshis) including working for a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Bangladesh. But that’s distinctly something to control the population of “those people” and not anything we would ever talk about among “our people.”
But for example abortion is still technically illegal in Japan, even if it’s available in practice (reflecting the quintessential Japanese willingness to live with a little inconsistency to avoid having to compromise principle and pragmatism).
The article you linked to says abortion. Is this what you meant by the word "miscarriage"? I got curious, because doctors usually mean by this term spontaneous termination of pregnancy, which would remove any intent from the picture; and can there be a crime without an intent?
Thanks, got it. The article confused me even more. It doesn't go into the details of the case, and talks about "criminalization of women suffering obstetric emergencies" (which emergencies?) in one paragraph and a "Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion" in another.
What does that have to do with anything? El Salvadorans are entitled to run their country according to their own culture and beliefs. It’s called self determination and it’s a recognized right of free peoples. Last I checked women in El Salvador can vote and could change the rule if that’s what they wanted, but they don’t.
The El Salvadoran Constitution recognizes a right to life beginning at conception. Technically, Germany’s Basic Law enshrines the same right according to the interpretation of its high court, although Germany takes a different view of how that right should be balanced against other values of the basic law like individual self determination: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ctx.2002.1.2.27. People being able to make these sorts of trade offs between different values is the core of democracy.
Dont think the losing of bitcoin value can be blamed in case of default