Bitcoin Forum

I'm up late... my mind is whirling.  I'm trying to figure out what the feds are going to to about bitcoin.  I've come to the conclusion that cryto currencies are here to stay. 

The situation is this.  Confidence in the world's reserve currency is rapidly waning.  The IMF has been calling for a dollar alternative (http://www.boounce.com/search/?g=163&s=1449&q=IMF+calls+for+dollar+alternative), gold is more expensive than platinum, and the US dept is over $16 trillion.  The dollar has big problems.

I keep thinking about a point my old economics prof made about the the government being reluctant to change the physical characteristics (color) of the dollar.  The dollar represents ultimate stability.  Changing it might affect that.  Bitcoin is such a minuscule part of the economy.  The last thing the feds want to do is highlight fear and weakness in the dollar by labeling bitcoin as a threat.  Additionally, all they would do is create iterative competitors. Their only recourse is to embrace and regulate it, or go after it covertly. 

1) the world is not run by dollars
2) China owns most of US
3) the euro is pretty much borked
4) other stuff

If bitcoin takes hold how are they going to able to fund their police state or military industrial complex to go after bitcoin ?

If they were really all powerful the silk road wouldnt be out there giving them the finger right now  :)

Right now, Bitcoin doesn't really pose a risk to the establishment. They're probably not allocating a lot of resources to investigating or cracking it at the moment. If an economic collapse happens (thing Wiemar Republic style) then they will throw everything they have at it. Will that work? Probably not. We can assume the NSA is already working on it and they haven't (to our knowledge) cracked it yet.

So what does that leave?

Laws.  If a collapse happens, gold, silver, other precious metals and Bitcoin will likely flourish. A call on gold would probably happen and Bitcoins would be outlawed. We'd see a sudden rash of terrorists using Bitcoins to finance extremist activities and general fearmongering.  When you have a public obedient enough to hand over their gold and silver voluntarily, they will run from this spooky new Internet currency in droves. Bitcoin would be completely disconnected from the mainstream.

But on the fringes... :-)

When a state reaches peak extortion and begins to lose the ability to function the people who have control of government-owned resources usually start looting whatever they can get their hands on. This is followed by a dissolution of the existing government and the formation of a new one that doesn't recognize the financial obligations of the previous one (too bad about those pensions...).

I expect the government to spend more time using Bitcoin to to launder misappropriated funds than it spends trying to outlaw it.

LOLZ.  US owns most of US debt.  Try reading more than the headline next time.

+++1

China owns tiny portion of US debt, and almost no US asset.

I'm not sure how $1.1T can be considered tiny.

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/mfh.txt

cause unfunded obligations of the USA $ ponzi scheme are 1 quadrillion $
as that countrys inhabitants decline to be able to count on three........reconciliation will require even more popcorn as in the second world war.....
cause this time it´ll take place on the ignorants own soil

The Fed != Us Gov, Private banks got the US (and most others) to bend over and spread wide ...

I'm tempted to agree that china is the biggest holder, why ? The fed is owned by several private institutions, if you could look at owner ship shares and follow the trail I'm sure you can add a few trillion extra on to china's account.

Not to mention that this does not account for all private and/or corperate owned depth inside the US!
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-holders-of-us-gov-t-debt.html


As for state, they will do what they always do: if you can't beat it, join it and change it from the inside ... (co-opt)

But what if the mainstream had already adopted it?

It's a sure bet that a majority of the people working in the Federal system have no idea how bitcoin works, assuming they've even heard of it. Bitcoin's strength is that it's an idea first and foremost and a currency/commodity second. Ideas aren't valued in the upper realms of American "culture" anymore since only the $$ signs matter.

Of the small percentage that work on the Fed Farm that do understand bitcoin, I'd also bet that at least some of them actually LIKE the idea. If you're smart enough to grasp how bitcoin works, you're also smart enough to know why the current economic system won't work anymore.

Just federal debt alone, is 16T, 1.1T is just what 7%? yeah that's what I consider tiny. Not to mention we have state and municipal debts, that has already cause a number of municipality to declare bankruptcy. This is just government debt. US companies have another 40T of corporate debt.

peanuts compared to the shaddow banking systems quadrillion ponzified derivatives....are you american?  trying to start counting?

It's >25% of foreign-owned debt. The Fed and other US agencies own something like >20% of the total debt, which is fairly meaningless. Any money the fed makes on interest is transferred to the treasury. What do local and corporate debts have to do with this thread?

the state built bridges for the homeless and fema camps for those who "occupy" and guantanamos for those who cried for "change"
yes we can ! but first lets bomb Iran
you elect Ron Paul or your empire is gone

I was responding to someone's claim that "China owns most of US". Which is inaccurate since China owns just 7% of federal debt, which is tiny. Plus, federal debt itself is tiny when compared to state+municipal+corporate debt.

Another interesting thing to think about is what would happen to consumer-level debts denominated in USD if the USD did indeed collapse?  If USD was worthless, then I could buy it up by the bucketloads and pay off my house quickly.  Or, would the banks attempt to convert the loans into something else (even though I don't think that would be contractually possible)?

Great question. In essence, as your post alludes, hyperinflation ($$$ collapse) is debt default by the back door.

Exactly.  And I'm looking forward to it, because I've got a house that is worth less than I owe on it, plus some nice-sized student loans.

I suspect Bitcoiners are sometimes a little to prone to believe that 'the people' will be on their/our side.  Particularly US Bitcoiners.

To people who:

 - rely on direct assistance from the government for necessities like food (a rapidly growing number)

 - rely on the government for employment (a pretty large number which, notably, include the paramilitaries)

 - rely on the framework which the government facilitates such as infrastructure, foreign policy pressures, etc (a huge number)

threats to the USD, and even similar replacement in the event of a failure, are pretty much a direct and immediate threat to their mode of existence.  This is actually a reality, so all the government really has to do is to make the reality apparent in order to sway probably a significant majority to support 'the official system'.

Since very few individuals have gold, and even fewer have BTC, I don't think that the 'powers that be' would have to much trouble provoking the plebs to adopt the position which they find desirable.  And although not a certainty, I doubt that the position will include private citizens autonomously controlling either physical gold/silver or Bitcoin secret keys.

My favorite analogy is buggy whip factories and the internal combustion engine. The Federal Reserve and its dependents that you mention are buggy whip factories. Bitcoin is the internal combustion engine, being met with incomprehension and later, resistance. But there are no more buggy whip factories.

You haven't experience hyper inflation yet.

I think the majority of economists, would argue growth is good right up to the point where everything collapse and then still blame lack of growth.

The problem you face is that in the case of a currency system, things seem to always roll back to centralized control in spite of such solutions as PM's being known about and in widespread use for periods of time through history.  So either the analogy you've drawn is backward or not to the magnitude you image (buggy vs. automobile.)  (As an aside, without the ability to obtain and transport liquid fuels the thing an automobile owner may wish he had most might actually be a buggy and a whip to drive it...but that's a different story.)

I should qualify things a bit by stating my belief that there is little difference between Bitcoin and gold.  The latter former is simply a set of clever tricks which add utility...and fragility as well to be fair.

edit: slight fixes

A majority of economists would also be out of a job if they uttered the blasphemy of the Austrian school.

My analogy suffers from drawbacks, yes.

The truly frightening thing about bitcoin to the status quo is that it's the first new store of value and currency in centuries. There are probably no analogies that will do it justice.

I think you are over-estimating things somewhat by not simply choosing a basic classification and then analyzing how the solution really compares to other solutions which fall into the classification.  As a Bitcoin fan myself, and someone who really does believe that Bitcoin has the potential to rock things significantly, I've done the same.  But I find it valuable to step back and put on my jaded view glasses to try to better see where the pitfalls lie.  In this way they might be addressed proactively.

I've been looking for other models. Bitcoin appears to be a singularity, though I'd always be glad to be shown otherwise.



Complete agreement. But the more I look at this, the more I see that the protocol's strengths make up for the weaknesses and in some cases, the weakness may actually be a strength.

I see bitcoin as the geeky kid in class that everyone makes fun of until he grows up and then his detractors go to him looking for job.

Yip he has to service school though without giving up, it also doesn't help that teacher doesn't like him.

You remember what Bill Gates said? "Be nice to nerds, chances are you will end up working for one.".


Awesome↓↓
http://www.ted.com/talks/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_glider_to_humming_bird_drone.html

If states attack bitcoin they're likely to shutdown the exchanges first as that's the easiest and most obvious thing to do if you are a state.

The irony is, they'll be showing all their totalitarian colours doing this. The exchanges are, as far as I know, compliant with all the numerous strict financial-services regulations. A totalitarian government (yes, the US are one example) might just cry "money laundering", though, as an excuse for shutting down the exchanges. If we manage to grow the bitcoin economy sufficiently large before that eventual point then it won't hurt us so much since it would be akin to bolting the stable after the horse bolted, or similar to forcibly shutting down gold dealers/liquidators after many people have already decided to trade amongst themselves with gold coins/nuggets.

Propaganda. It's amazing how leadable most people are. If they start hearing stories about how Bitcoin is used by terrorists or that the government is raiding users who hold Bitcoins, or other propaganda, they'll likely abandon it out of pure fear if nothing else. Never underestimate the state's ability to scare or beat its citizens into submission.

Fair enough, but you should also never underestimate the power of an idea whose time has come. Plus, the state's credibility isn't exactly riding high these days. The 2008 financial crisis made a lot of people start asking questions about our monetary system for the first time in their lives. (I'm one of those people.) And I believe that 2008 was only a small preview of coming attractions. When the REAL financial crisis hits, people will likely be even more open to alternatives like Bitcoin. The internet has also weakened the state's propaganda power immensely. Look at the progress that's been made in ending the war on drugs (especially marijuana). Anytime there's a drug war-related story with open comments, those comments run 10 to 1 in favor of reform. You can see the same thing in online articles about Bitcoin when someone tries to spread FUD. Finally, don't forget that the state simply CAN'T stop Bitcoin (or at least that's what I'm told by people much smarter than I am). At best they can temporarily weaken it or slow its growth. But if and when that happens, Bitcoin will simply adapt and come back that much stronger.

Holy crap, I'm not sure when it happened, but I think at some point, Bitcoin actually turned me into an optimist.

you got it !! ;)

Hapy new world

The state is already cracking down innit? In the UK, first they stopped the Intersango exchange from receiving GBP deposits into their UK bank account with Metro Bank. No explanation was given why Metro Bank decided to freeze Intersango's account. And now today, Barclays, another UK bank has suspended Mt Gox's GBP bank account with them as well. Mt Gox says that no reason was given behind this action. They coming after us boyz!

I'd been expecting it 'any day now' for about 16 months.  It drove me to take the BTC position I wanted to be holding with some haste which ended up costing me a bit.  In fairness though, when USD/BTC got down to the $2-ish mark I was not so concerned about being harassed from the finance perspective...rather, it just seemed like a good deal at that time and I took a bigger position than planned.  Anyway, at this point I see widespread harassment as one of the better things which could happen for Bitcoin and I'm sitting fat and happy.  So, the world is good!

Financial harassment is nothing new of course.  As best I can tell it was a major factor in Tradehill shutting down.

Lastly, although I am not real keen on the authorities harassing people generally, I'm not going to exactly shed a lot of tears if the likes of pirateat40, Bruce, 'Tom Williams', the Intersango clowns, and the BFL guys (if they turn out to be perps) getting thrown in the pokey for their transgressions.  All of them have put a black mark on Bitcoin and thus both set back my hopes for the solution and  also cost me money.  Just like when so many people gloat about finding 'free power' to run their miners, law enforcement whacking these types is kind of like finding 'free muscle'...though it's a gift horse I would peer into the mouth of...

Well done dude for the confidence in your convictions. In my sig, Ghandi says they attack you then the next step is we win!  ;)

In the UK, if they laugh at you then you're definitely on to a good thing. Hey look, David Cameron finally worked out people were talking about him on Twitter (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4557241/David-Cameron-joins-Twitter-after-calling-tweeters-tts.html).

More likely, (here at least) we'll see an attack along the usual line of "anonymity is bad because we can't know you're not morally suspicious" while forgetting that most people are morally suspicious because being morally unsuspicious just means doing what the government want you to do. Hence a Treasury Minister attacking cash (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18964640).

I guess it's actually in the interests of the state to declare Bitcoin as legal tender. Then they can regulate anyone accepting Bitcoins as formal entities - selling something for Bitcoins would require you to register as a company and file tax returns. Accepting donations might require you to register as a charity, etc.

That's probably a good thing in terms of getting Bitcoin "accepted" rather than clamped down on.

Sales Tax on merchant nodes, property tax, luxury tax, capital gains taxes (enforced by exchangers), and a variety of other ways they can tax you (EVEN WITH Bitcoin)....

People who are serious about Bitcoin need to stop saying that they aren't going to be paying any taxes...

I will admit that it will be much more difficult for a state authority to abuse a system like Bitcoin, but saying we're not paying taxes!

It sends the wrong message, and only shows you are living in pure fantasy land when you say "they can't touch me", when really they can...

posted by nobbynobbynoob:

Unfortunately that will be just plain ok with the mainstream.   That is precisely what the US government did with online sportsbooks, and despite some minor protests and sabre-rattling, no one really gave much of a shit or did anything about it.  Same with US digital currency exchangers, which is why there are so few of them despite the relative ease of getting an MSB licence.   

Really, the BTC<->USD conduit is and always will be the weak point in the Bitcoin idea.  As long as there is a significant need to move from one to the other, shutting down the BTC economy will be as simple as shutting off a light switch, which is why so few people in the USG know or care about Bitcoin.   As with digital gold, as with sportsbooks, the day the government decides that it might be a good idea to clamp it down, the first shot will always be to scatter the roaches by shutting off the USD spigot at the banking end of things.   


Frank

The window of opportunity to do this lasts until there are enough things available for sale for Bitcoins that converting them to USD is no longer necessary.

+1

Frank Braun was recently pointing this out on the Max Keiser Report on RT (it's on YouTube, and at about 14 minutes into the video, Max talks about "someone" who suggested the world becoming like East Germany - Max, that "someone" was me! ;D )

Everything it is able to do.

I think that once those in power realize how handy bitcoin is for bribes, kickbacks and hidden contributions they will embrace it and protect it.

posted by AbelsFire:

In theory, yes; however, it should be noted that at the time of their respective shut downs, this was true of both the Liberty Dollar and e-gold.   

One could buy virtually anything online with e-gold, pay bills online, send payments to and receive payments from non-users of e-gold, etc.  Being largely offline the LD worked a little differently, but there were entire communities where it had a strong and sometimes almost universal acceptance.   Both rolled up and vanished practically overnight, as if they never happened.   The Liberty Dollar was referred to on record as a "unique form of domestic terrorism," and not one person outside of the LD userbase batted an eyelash or wondered how on earth minting and using silver coins could be a form of terrorism.   e-gold was shut down and its founders and officers barely escaped prison time, on the basis that a vast amount of criminal activity was occurring within the system; four years later, if even a single criminal has been brought to justice as a result of the multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation, the state is suprisingly quiet about it.   

Like a light switch.   So, while it is theoretically true that the weak link could be eliminated, it is not at all certain that it will be -- despite having certainly been possible in other cases, the critical "tipping point" just never occurred. 


Frank 

Taxation is theft.

We still should pay taxes to help ppl with limited abilities.

Robbery even. :)

State 'thinking':

This new thingamacurrency will empower people to ignore our dictates. Lets write some more dictates.

I don't think either one had the international reach Bitcoin has.

If the United States bans Bitcoin they can't stop me from using it to pay for VPN service from a provider in Europe. If they also convince EU countries to ban Bitcoin the service can move to any part of the world that's not banning it yet.

Once the critical mass of commerce is reached there won't be any practical way of shutting it down besides turning off the Internet entirely.

If you see a person with limited abilities who is in need, just pull out a gun and point it at the 5 nearest fully abled people and demand the cash in their pockets. Then give that money the the limited ability person and send the fully able people on their way. problem = solved.

I am all for helping people with limited abilities, but it should be voluntary, not forced.

posted by AbelsFire:

Decentralisation is BTC's strong suit, to be sure.   It is not without its chinks, and if it is too problematic to try to contain then the "gateways" (exchangers and the like) will be the pressure point -- which circles back to my original statement, that these gateways will always be a weak point.    My point about broad implementation was merely that it didn't serve as any kind of an aegis for regular users of the LD and e-gold.


Frank

I think this raises an interesting question. We often talk about "the state" as though it's a single conscious entity. Of course, "the state" is really a fiction. It's just a bunch of smaller organizations, and those organizations are really just a bunch of people. And the same is true of the corporations / banks / financial elite that control the state. Bitcoin is on the radar of at least some of those people.  But which ones? And which ones see it as a threat?  And which ones really understand the enormity of that threat?  In other words, which ones recognize that Bitcoin is not just a way to "launder money" -- it's a way to replace money?  And as you pointed out, if they really understand Bitcoin doesn't that mean that they're also likely to understand how corrupt and broken our current monetary system is, making them likely supporters? (To know Bitcoin is to love Bitcoin, right?) How do you see the decision to attack Bitcoin being made? At what point? By whom?  It would be interesting to know how the decision was made to go after e-Gold and the Liberty Dollar.  

And (sort of related), this is why I have somewhat conflicting feelings about the Bitcoin Foundation. And part of me is astonished that the developers aren't all, like Satoshi, maintaining their anonymity. Don't they realize how subversive Bitcoin is?! Don't they realize the threat it represents to the defenders of the status quo? But on the other hand, I also think, well of course they don't need to be anonymous. They're not doing anything wrong or illegal.  And there's something to be said for self-fulfilling prophecies. If you expect others to view you as a threat (and act accordingly), they're much more likely to view you as a threat.  If you expect acceptance, you're more likely to receive it.

Thoughts?

Most of "the state" (smaller orgs and individuals) take dollar dominance completely for granted. They can't mobilize against an impossibility. Likely a few sub-state orgs do fully understand, but they can't get much cooperation on a big mission without starting a panic themselves. It would be like shouting that there is a mouse in the movie theater. No one listens to you probably, but maybe you can make the mouse sound super-powerful and evil but if you succeed you've mostly convinced people that you do not have the situation in hand.

Bitcoin is not decentralized. It is actually very centralized. Bitcoin is not just the network and the protocol. Bitcoin is also about mining. A coordinated action in just 24 hours can shut down a dozen mining pools and that will be the end. In the original paper Satoshi talked about CPU mining, not GPU mining. Technically the weakest point is not the exchangers but centralization of mining activity!

Won't killing off mining operations, if indeed that's possible, just serve to revalue the existing 10 million plus BTC already in circulation?

No. Mining is not just new coin generation. It is also (and more important) transactions verification in every single block!

Doh, indeed. My brain really should be working better at this time since I generally am a night owl. But if one mining op gets zapped, difficulty rate drops and smaller mining ops can thrive again. Undermining or destroying the Bitcoin network probably isn't too easy. If it was, "they" (whichever shady powers we're considering) might've done it already, especially to help dispose of black markets such as Silk Road.

You guys have a real paranoid streak.  The feds don't give a shit about bitcoin.  You can't buy food or land with it, and the entire economy is only worth about 100 million.  Besides, the rampant constant scamming done with it is doing more than enough to ensure no one will ever trust it on any large scale.

Let's compare to e-gold:


and


So obviously the feds would never go after e-gold because it's too small and associated with constant scams. So yeah, we're probably just being paranoid.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/

Miners will keep mining at the shutdown pools you think? Probably they like getting paid so no.

Must be true since TheBible tells me so..

It's as likely that the authorities will prop it up as it is that they would shut it down as long as it remains an exceptional honey-pot for attracting users with potentially interesting attributes.  At least until it starts to gain more traction, value, legitimacy, etc.  I would anticipate a more active and negative response from the official authorities if Bitcoin gets on a trajectory where real success looks like a potential outcome.

Yes, you are right.  The people that have invested their time and money in mining rigs would never think to try pool # 13, or p2pool, or solo mining.

Even India's Supreme Court rejected that conclusion:

Possession of fake currency not an act of terror
 - http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/other-states/possession-of-fake-currency-not-an-act-of-terror-hc/article4044723.ece

Then everyone start using p2pool. Good luck shutting down it.

Nah, actually a 51% attack is much easier and much much more effective.

Well said.  "The People" are by and large children in adults' bodies who expect their Mommy and Daddy government to take care of everything and wipe the peanut butter from their ears.  When Mommy and Daddy government dies, "The People" will be the first to wail on the streets in disbelief, and throw violent tantrums.

If you want to get an idea of what level of catastrophe this will be, imagine a very bratty and spoiled child who is suddenly left alone to his own devices, and now imagine this child is a man-child (adult but with a child's brain), and now multiply that by two hundred million people.

Naw.

Fifty percent of the people are dependent on the state at least in some form, if not totally.

The credibility of the current politicians might be low, but the credibility of the state as a religious idea, is at an all time high.

It's got nowhere to go except down. The credibility of the state is inversely proportional to the size of the informal economy, and that's not going to get smaller any time soon. Growth in the underground economy is the normal and expected response of a population to economic stress, we've seen that in every country that's had a major currency crisis.

Well, this is true.  Unfortunately, the per capita percentage of underground economy in the U.S. is nowhere near the levels of countries like Argentina or Ecuador.

Devaluation of the dollar hasn't yet reached the same levels those countries have experiences in their currencies.

If the dollar went down, Ecuador would be fucked once again.  That would be LOLsome.  Bad Luck Brian Ecuadorians.

Maybe the OPs question should have been

"What can the state do?"

it would make for good starting point for an analyses of possible state/supra-state attack possibilities upon bitcoin.

Here's how I see it going down:

1. As the State (pick your State) spirals down into inevitable default, confidence in the State deteriorates even further.

2. For economic/survival reasons more people move into the informal economy - bitcoin helps them and helps protect them from confiscation, inflation, etc.

3. Tax revenue drops off and cash-starved States are forced to either shrink (cut costs), increase taxes, or inflate at a faster rate.

4. Those who move into the shadow economy - and protect their savings with bitcoin - will be less affected than those who don't and they will be able to bear the increased tax burden better than their non-bitcoin neighbors.

5. As the poor economy worsens, and the tax burden becomes too great for the non-bitcoiners, they will go into the streets in open revolt - thus creating somewhat of a check against State expansion - all while pushing more people into the informal economy and bitcoin.

6. At this point the State either becomes brutally totalitarian or shrinks dramatically. To prevent the former it is imperative that the ideas of liberty and sound economics are preached far and wide because, in the end, it is ultimately a war of ideas.

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

“Economics is sometimes thought of as a very dry and dismal subject dealing with dusty tomes of statistics about material goods and services.  Economics is not a dry subject.  It is not a dismal subject.  It is not about statistics.  It is about the human life.  It is about the ideas that motivate human beings.  It is about how men act from birth until death.  It is about the most important and interesting drama of all – human action.

“The main objective of economics is to substitute consistently correct ideas and actions for the contradictory ideas and actions inherent in popular fallacies…

“We all want things that are not necessarily essential, but we always choose those actions which we think will best improve the situation from our viewpoint.  This means that the ideas that men hold determine their choice of actions.  This means that the most important thing in the world is ideas.”

- Percy L. Greaves, Jr., Understanding the Dollar Crisis

BTW: Can you guess who the elephant represents in the quote beneath my avatar?

It seems plausible that in the process of the Bitcoin economy supplanting the state, the huge boost to economic efficiency (along with other techologies like 3D printing) will drive general prosperity so incredibly high that few will miss the state's handouts; at no point in time will people be in a position to dislike what  Bitcoin is doing, because the effects of diminishing their state welfare programs will happen further down the line than the material gains. In other words, by the time bitcoins start cutting into the state's welfare schemes, it will already be far too late, and shutting down or regulating bitcoin at that point will result in massively worse effects for the average person, so they will oppose it. We can already see a similar dynamic with the Internet itself.

Of course, with Bitcoin the state will be much more likely to attack early and hard than with the Internet. But perhaps by the time it does people will already see bitcoins as the "currency of the Internet" - a once-maligned but now jealously guarded freedom.

There's plenty of documentation available about what governments do when they go full retard.

This is what's happening right now (http://www.dailywealth.com/2202/Crisis-Replay-Soon-Argentina-Will-Be-on-Sale-Again) in Argentina, for example:

If you want more examples this list should provide a good starting point: http://www.munknee.com/2011/03/21-countries-have-experienced-hyperinflation-in-last-25-years-is-the-u-s-next/ (http://www.munknee.com/2011/03/21-countries-have-experienced-hyperinflation-in-last-25-years-is-the-u-s-next/)

Argentina sounds like it is being run by a desperate, paranoid, jealous, suspicious woman ....