Chile Forum

This smells a lot like the early stages of the last economic implosion in Argentina.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... in_america

Last time the government ran out of money, they started printing fake U.S. currency (with Argentina's name on it of course).

Oh no, here come the relocating gringo expats from Argentina ... If they still have money left to be expats in "more expensive" Chile.

Yea, I am expecting a whole lot of calls back from all the expats that talked to us over the last few years, I told them not to invest in Argentina (yet), and they did anyway. Even if just the social unrest gets a few of them guessing.

This is not the first red flag to go up either. The first sign was last year when the news broke that Argentina's government economic statistics office had been artificially manipulating the numbers for the last three years for political reasons. Those are the sorts of numbers people start making investment decisions based on, and if they are bad often all the other assumptions about investment tend to go rotten (generally speaking).

All that (relatively) cheap land in Argentina is cheap for a reason. It can get a whole lot cheaper, a whole lot quicker.

I am waiting to buy my ski resort. Think I'll go do some window shopping this season around Bariloche.

When the busts happen however the Argentina population goes in to a sort of denial that it is happening for about 6 months. Everyone tries to tell you there is no problem, and that nothing is wrong; even though their currency is devaluing, banks are closing, and so on. It is that period where you shop and wait for the prices to come down.