Is Latin America's Boom Over? A Pall, Personal and Economic, Falls Over a Regional Summit ... A pall was cast over the summit of Mercosur nations in Uruguay this week when Iván Heyn, Argentina's Undersecretary for Foreign Trade, was found dead, hanged with a belt in his Montevideo hotel room. Heyn, only 34, was a rising star and close friend of the family of Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was just sworn in Dec. 10 after her landslide re-election victory. Visibly upset, Fernández, who is taking over as chair of the South American trade alliance, could have been speaking in a personal as well as macroeconomic context when she told her fellow heads of state at the end of the summit on Dec. 21, "We have to protect each other." Uruguayan investigators say they're trying to determine whether Heyn's death was a suicide or possibly accidental asphyxiation. – UK Telegraph

Dominant Social Theme: Now South America! What's going on, fellows? This ain't fair.

Free-Market Analysis: Oh, boy, who couldn't see this coming? We've written about the BRIC inflationary instability – especially Brazil and India – and now this economic insight has been blessed by that maven of behind-the-times analysis, TIME Magazine.

Yes, TIME Magazine, which only a little while ago, from what we can tell, discovered that China was on the way down, has now figured out that South America is bound to slow down too as its engine, Brazil, sputters and fails. Argentina, of course, has long ceded its economic dominance.

But one needs to ask why should this be? Why should a "boom" yield to a TIME Magazine-analyzed bust? Is it merely the tenor of the times? Is it simply the way the world works? Or is there some other unstated manifestation?

Well ... of course there is, in our view. It cannot be stated too many times (since there is an entire, global, mainstream press that will never state it) that the world's economy is an artificial environment. If it were a "free market" system, it would not be nearly so artificial.

It is an artificial market because the powers-that-be that want to create one-world government need a platform from which to continue their manipulations. It suits their purposes (see other article, this issue) to continue to promote the world's evident economic decay. Without creating chaos, order (world government) cannot be introduced. First we have a global depression.

A free-market system would be infinitely preferable to this insane, fiat-money global system in which entire continents plunge into recessions and depressions at the same time. But we do not have free markets. It does not suit the elites to allow them to operate.

No, they have moved us in the opposite direction – with honeyed words purveyed by a vast promotional apparatus (including TIME Magazine itself). The world is "interconnected," we learn over and over. That's only because the powers-that-be have imposed central banking on virtually every country and coordinate monetary stimulation via the BIS, G20, etc.

What kind of insanity promotes the creation of this kind of centralization, fragility and brittleness? Every regulation that supposedly makes markets "safer" actually further concentrates financial and economic activity and makes economies more prone to booms and busts. It's like funneling a stampede through the eye of a needle.

Then there are exchanges themselves. Somehow the consolidation continues. It makes no sense, of course, to have just one major exchange trading everything. In reality, fragmentation should be occurring as people use the Internet to set up flexible trading system. But the opposite is happening. The very largest and most destructive trading environments continue to merge – and to ask us to believe it is a natural and "competitive" occurrence.

Meanwhile, central banks continue to do what they do best – print money from nothing in endlessly distortive waves of depreciating currency. First, people feel wealthy and later on – as economic realities sink in – stock markets plunge. Recessions and depressions begin.

That's where the world is today. It's no surprise. Everything the ruling classes do (at the behest of the top Anglosphere elites) makes things worse. The centralization that is portrayed as inevitable is an endless feedback loop of ruin.

And still the centralizing tendencies continue! And we are made to believe that the solutions to the problems caused by regulation, global trading and central banking is ... more of the same! It makes no sense on any level. Not even at the top. Here's some more from the TIME Magazine article:

But even before the Undersecretary's demise, the Mercosur nations were feeling an end-of-the-year malaise – and an urgent need to protect each other's economies. In short, the continent's decade-long boom may be ending. According to the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Latin American growth, which topped 6% last year, will slow to 4.3% this year and 3.7% in 2012.

Brazil's economy, the region's largest, actually flat-lined in the third quarter; Argentina's scorching growth of 9% this year will be halved to 4.8% next year, and capital flight is expected to be robust. Mexico's growth, meanwhile, will drop from 4% to 3.3%. That's hardly doomsday news, but it's one reason the Montevideo summit's main action was to raise protective import tariffs

A big reason the severe global recession hadn't caught up with most of Latin America until now is that el boom was fueled mostly by exports of commodities, from soy to iron ore, to insatiable China. But even China's stratospheric growth is expected to fall in 2012. That, coupled with still drooping demand in the U.S. and Europe, is bad news for Latin America – but not only because the global market for its raw materials will be weaker ...

You see, dear reader, it is COINCIDENTAL. It is simply the way systems work. It never seems to occur to the mavens at TIME to ask WHY the systems work the way they do. And who put them in place to begin with?

The article informs us that the reason South America is in a fragile state is because the region slipped "once more into its addiction to raw materials exports." Well, of course, this only makes sense as the Chinese economy – where the raw materials are going – is similarly juiced by central banking money-from-nothing. The whole system is on "financial crack." Addiction is the right word, but not for reasons TIME is proposing.

And then there is bromide as an aside in the middle of the article: (See: "A New Iron Lady: Why Dilma Is Brazil's Best Bet to Revive Its Economy"). Here we go again! What Brazil needs is a "leader," according to TIME.

As if a "leader" can make a change in this horrible economic system that the Anglosphere elites have foisted on the world. Leaders in the current age are bought-and-paid-for agents of the elites that promote their placements.

The article concludes by telling us that four major Latin American economies on the region's Pacific rim – Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia (with Panama as an observer) – "agreed this month to start a new trade bloc, the Alliance of the Pacific, to put them in closer contact with the Asian 'tiger' markets."

A new trading block ... More centralization ... It never occurs to the TIME writers and editors that business arrangements should be the province of businesspeople. No, in this modern and efficient age, elected officials create "trading blocks" and horribly complex trade agreements – that do the opposite of what they are supposedly intended to do.

It is just a farce. It really is. You don't believe this idea of "directed history"? Don't believe the Anglosphere power elite uses Money Power to organize and generate what is written in the history books? How about the famous anonymous (2004) statement by an actor in the Bush administration, as quoted in the New York Times: "We create reality. And while you are studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Explain central banking, then. Explain why Afghanistan ended up with a central bank as soon as the Taliban were thrown out. Where NATO goes, central banking follows. At the beginning of the 20th century there were very few central banks and almost none of the fiat variety. Now the entire world is connected by this accursed fiat blight. The good, gray men of central banking are supposed to be the new priesthood, the new and divine technocracy.

In our humble view, it is simply no coincidence that the world's major commercial regions are all foundering and failing as the new decade turns the corner. Every part of this global, artificial economy rises and falls together, like one horrible heart.

Sure, the Americas are beginning to deflate now. Sure, the bubble is bursting in South America. Just as it has burst in the US and Europe. Just as it has burst in China (and soon enough, Asia). If there were no central banks to organize and promote this chaos, we would be less suspicious of what is going on. TIME, of course, is not suspicious at all.

Conclusion: No, the writers and editors of TIME seem to be convinced that the ongoing, continual descent into world depression is merely part of some larger natural force beyond control. It simply is not. And those who perceive the essentially artificial and malicious nature of what is taking place are in our view in a better position to defend themselves and their families than those who close their eyes.

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