Pope Francis Laments On Day Of The Poor: The Rich Are Winning

[sandensea]

4. And as an Argentine, he's seen what happens when the rich decide they've tired of democracy

and of having to share with others.

Until the 1980s Argentine living standards were far above the rest of the region, and even above some European countries.

But a coup in 1976 ushered in a far-right dictatorship that, besides killing at least 22,000 dissidents (by their own admission), effected a massive trasnfer of income and wealth from the middle and working classes (most Argentines belonged to one or the other), to the proverbial 1%.

They and their friends in big business and banking took on colossal debts that they then offshored - leaving everyone else the tab and an economy stumbling under the weight of the debt.

Fast-forward 35 years, and it just happened again - by way of a right-wing carnival barker not unlike Trump (in fact they've been friends since the '80s).

It's the same thing Wall Street did with derivatives in the Dubya years - except that in our case, the Fed simply printed $20 trillion to paper over the losses. Argentina, of course, couldn't do that.

Thanks for posting this. Francis may be wrong on some issues (like abortion); but he has tremendous insights into socioeconomics.