Locky The Bunny: What's In Store For The Gullible People of Costa Rica

Dear Lee Jordan,




Four days already? No shit! Well, as usual this time of the year, I'm full of work. And well, as I have discovered, the reason of such a "seasonal" labour is due to the poor managing of the different chiefs who lord about us with their absolute lack of vision and limitless idiocy, which pair into the amazing ability to force labour force into working on baloney to turn it into bullshit to then end up with a poor service, badly planned out, risibly tarified and ridiculously justified. Where are we now? Let me see. This is already November, and there's not even a whisper about the projects we started earlier this year, which would have taken a year to develop (though I have projected, reasonably, near to two years at full speed developing). But then again, it's perfectly fine. After all, the "Planning Department" is still trying to figure out a new "procedure" that has to be different from the old, proved, aproved procedure "just to show 'em who's the big daddy now". When I have not taken my pills the night before, at witnessing this I feel like back again when Mary and Marie-Joséphine fought over my bones. @_@ Fuck, the life of meaningless drama of today's youth. Thanks Hyne for the gray hairs and the wisdom.

But then again, Wisdom.

I wonder of the fate that awaits the world when intelligence is shuned, and everybody seems to live not just for the instant gratification, but also, for a mindless instant result regardless of the mess it will cause later on. From two different sources I was warned last week for the exact same thing: intelligence. It is not, then again, a topic for which I am not berated on regular basis. (I guess it's because I keep being "smart".) First I read it in my friend Roo's journal. Among the advises to "manage anger" (the sweet Roo), there were things like "do not express your opinion", and it criticized you if you thought you were surrounded by idiots. Oh, good one "do not show you know". I guess that if you are angry because you are surrounded by morons who do not have the mental hability to understand you, then well, yeah, you are right to be angry, but instead of sinking to their level, you should try and motivate them, or push them to meet your standards. Isn't that the natural way? Later on the week, one of my thesis mates told me that I should not expect others to be as "intelligent" as I am, because "not everybody has grown up in a priviledged condition like you do. Some people come from poor backgrounds." Oh goodie, so the effective use of the brain comes only with money.

First of all, I'm not pampered, and though boo-hoo, a lot of people had a hard life, I happen to have my share too. So fuck off. Then, if that's not prove enough, my dad comes from a really poor background, and yet he can use his brain and he's smart. If others are not, well, it is not my problem. This might sound deeply segregating, but if you are not smart enough to fill a position, leave said position to those who can. I am not here to keep treating softly those who got in here for "friendships".

But please, do not think that the epidemical idiocy is only present at my job. Please don't! Though it is world wide, and many papers can testify of that, I will just gloat right now on the supreme idiocy proper of this tiny country: Costa Rica.

You might think that a whole country can't possible be imbecile, but allegedly the 51.6% of the voting one of this country is beyond ridiculously stupid. Which is good for the government, who can do and undo, steal and forge and abuse and squeeze all it wants, and the people will keep stupidly staring into the void.

Many of our marvelously imbecilic population voted in favor of the CAFTA believing that they would gain access to more jobs and more goods and services. They took lies along with tacky t-shirts and now are left in a playground slowly darkening, where they think it's perhaps, just a wandering cloud before the Sun, or something that can't be controlled, and it's a normal, natural phenomenon. Fifteen people died buried under mud. When had such a thing ever happened here? No one adds one and one together. Oh, people throw garbage into the rivers, the rivers overflow and the mud burries the houses. Does it has to do with the CAFTA? Please, be serious. No, but it has to do with the people behind it. How? Well, why do this people have to throw the garbage into the river? Perhaps because there's not a decent, regunar, efficient garbage collecting service? Oh, that's a bad major. Well, yeah, then I forgot to mention that every garbage collector is private.

But lets not loose the track.

A lot of people really believed that they would have great jobs with fat paychecks, and damned! Paychecks in American Dollars!! What a bargain! More American enterprises would come, and give everybody jobs and there will be a lot of American products and it will be like living in Miami! Woo-Hoooo!

Most people do not read the "pink paper", or otherwise known as "El Financiero", which is Costa Rica's poor attempt at the "Wall Street Journal". In a two week old issue I managed to get my claws on, there's a front page article about the country's valuta politics. Around a year ago now, Costa Rica left a "mini-devaluation" foreing currency politic, which gave kind of "stability" to the currency (basically the American Dollar, as you can't really get anything else here. I know, I have tried. I have to get my Euro's from home. T_T) and a soft, continual growth. Basically, every day, the USD grew 0.05 colons, which was around 1.5 colons per month. So, if you were paid in USD, each month you had around 1.5 CRC more for each USD you made. So, if you made, lets say, $500 per month, you've got 750 CRC more per month, which is not much. Per year it added to, let's say, 9000 CRC extra per year. And that was with the average mini-devaluation of 0.05 daily. By september, october of last year it had reached to 0.20 per day, so do the maths. It was then when the Central Bank decided that keeping this system was too expensive, and so they decided to let the devisa price float between bands. It means that the CB fixed a roof and a floor and would let the currency linger in between. It scared a lot of people shitless. People used to the regular income product of the dollars, the added earning of their savings, and lately, the added raise of their paychecks, suddenly ran changing all their USD either into CRC or into EURO. Well, given the chances to get access to Euros, people just rushed towards the national currency.

Since I have already given an extended lecture on the nature of divisa markets, I will not repeat myself, so just get the general outline when I tell you, that this rush for CRC made the USD even push harder into the floor. Since the bands were stablished, the USD has been stuck to the floor. Since that day I foresaw that, if left with a little more of margin to the down, the divisa will plung, if not just plain dive. Though recently talked over with a friend and fellow colleague whom I both love and respect (this in the professional scope, as evidently I respect him as a person out of the love I have for him), he do agreed with me on the diving, but not the measure of it, I do believe that, as a minimum, the exchange rate should fall around 50% in a two year period. Namely, from the current 520, to a nominal 254. Imagine what that would do.

Well, if you live in Costa Rica and either earn in USD or have saving in USD, or do business in USD, imagine what that would do: it would mean less CRC for each USD you so hardly earn. So, maybe that $700 paycheck is okay, because it means you do 260.000 CRC per month. Well, with the new exchange rate, your same $500 would worth only 127.000 CRC.

Oh, but that would never happen, right? Well, it's exactly what the article says: the CB will perpare to let go the extrange rate to float free.

Now, let's see this in two sections:

1. Why would the Exchange Rate Plung?

To my knowledge, and okay, I am not a divisa analist, as people perceive the USD as a weaker currency, they will try to get rid of it before it looses all it's worth. Naturally, the CB will do whatever in hand to make sure this "plunging" is gradual and as painless as possible, but it will still plung. Imagine the role fo the CB as that of a parachute: it will allow the curency to land slower and softer. Though, one way or another it will land, unless thougher interventionist measures are taken, and so the "free floating" becomes a "dirty floating" and we will be all in square 1. Currently, thanks to the luxury exports, the amount of tourism, the paycheks in USD, and then the huge amounts of USD moving around the Real State market... well, that's a lot of USD poured into the market. If this money is not drained quickly out, people will just try to get rid of it at any price, or escape from it by requesting the prices in CRC or not taking USD as payment, and then guess what? The price falls another notch!

My paramethers to stablish the currency exchange rate on 254 for in within 2 years come from watching the general rates of the area, a comparison of the economics, analysis of the kind of expertations and importations on a very general, macro level, and then out of my basic and superficial knowledge of the monetary and fiscal politics traditionally followed by the Government.

Where will it stop plunging? I would say around the 100's, but I don't think it will fall below 60 CRC. However, forecasting this depends greatly in forecasting the future Governments, politics, interests and the market's general trend. Then, that's if the region do not take a common currency like the Euro, which I find hard to imagine, but it might happen. What would be the name of it? Hyne knows. Amero?

Now comes the really juicy question:

2. What would this mean along with the CAFTA?

Well, when the currency appreciates, the export goods (our goods) become relatively expensive, so foreigners would be less inclined to purchase them. Then imports will become cheapers, so our markets will be floaded with imported goods, which might be good for the selfish consumer who only wants more diversity, BUT it will be bad for the local producer, who won't be able to compete with the foreign products, particularly not in price. So, jobs will be lost. Independent enterpreneurs will break.

Sadly, as the currency appreciates another good will become "expensive" and that's labor force. So either people agree to get paid a smaller paycheck (and welcome the American lifestyle with three-two jobs to survive!),or they will lose their jobs. Social security, unemployment or employment termination insurances and such are costs that shall be either cut or eliminated in order to keep the foreign employers in the country. Remember that at this level our labor force will be competing with the slave labor force of which the world has around 27 million able hands. (Slaves cost only the food to keep them working, and they work as long as you want them to, and then you can whore them out to make extra bucks.)

Those lucky to keep their jobs, maybe not forced to a nominal paycheck reduction, will see their paychecks reduced due to the exchange rate, as I have previously depicted it.

These are all subjects that will not be covered in any of the lined up 13 Bills to prepare for the CAFTA, and even if they are mentioned, rest assured, those bills have so mayn hole you will be tempted to lay it on bread and eat it as blue cheese sandwich. HOw do I know? Because I'm not stupid. Because I think, and if more people were able to do so, they would also notice.

Since I can't do a thing to revert it, I'm preparing slowly to lift my anchor and go to greener pastures, but in the mean time, I'm smiling ear to ear and saying to all those who voted in favor of the CAFTA: "Hehehe! Told you, bitches! You wanted it, now shoulder it!!"


The next time someone wishes to advise me not to be "so intelligent", do me a favor, and instead of idiotically label me always as "intelligent", just try to do what I do, and THINK. You might find it it's not that hard at all, and then you will realize what I already know: you should not push people to the bottom line of imbecility, but push them up, to be better and THINK. It's sad tha the homo sapiens is really turning into the homo imbecilis.


Love to All,

Locky The Bunny