#47 | September 10 - 24, 1998  

Hey, Meester Russky...Wanna Buy a Miracle?

Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say.

Welp, these are desperate times, and what better desperate measures could help revive the Russian economy than the famed "Cavallo Plan" responsible for the world-famous "Argentina Miracle."

If you found yourself scratching your head and thinking, "Wait a minute, huh?" you probably weren't alone. Don't worry. You aren't suffering from memory loss; it's not the fault of all those afternoons you spent down in the creek baking out on Ricky Frye's 3-foot bong.

'Member how that weed was then? It was pretty bad, right? You probably coughed your brains out and gasped, "Arsh, dude... 'arsh!"

Guess what. The so-called "Cavallo Plan" is a little bit like that local homegrown shit you used to smoke. In the first place, it's harsh as hell. The alleged economic "miracle" resulted in unemployment skyrocketing from 6% in 1991, when the plan was first implemented, to over 18% a few years later. Today, the unemployment rate stubbornly hovers at around 17%, and there's no end in sight. It's worth remembering that one of the defining characteristics of an economic depression is unemployment over 10-12 percent.

What else has the "Cavallo Plan" brought? Poverty, as you might have guessed. The percentage of the Argentine population living beneath the poverty line rocketed from 16% before the Cavallo Plan to over 26% just five years after the miracle took hold. News reports tell of laid-off industrial workers in the suburbs of Buenos Aires resorting to skinning and bar-b-queuing cats to survive.

So who's calling it a "miracle"?

That's right, the IMF.

As the old anti-drug commercial used to end, "Any questions?" Already, the Cavallo Plan is losing its appeal to other, even more Latin anti-crisis plans. One such plan, the "Montana Plan," is written about here right here in an eXile exclusive. Read on!

You Think You're Fuckin' Tough

The eXile's undercover staff secretly obtained one of several anti-crisis plans being floated around the halls of power in Russia. While the "Cavallo Plan" grabbed most of the headlines last week, privately, sources are telling us that another Latin American plan is being seriously considered both because it is thought to be more relevant to the current situation, and because it is more Latin.

Dubbed the "Montana Plan" after its author, the late Tony Montana, this simple program for economic recovery is said to have been responsible for the so-called "Miami Miracle" of the mid-1980s. Here is the plan, in its entirety:

        1. Get the money.
        2. Get the power.
        3. Get the women.

An analyst from the brokerage house "Good Times", Jimmy "J.J." Walker, said that the Montana Plan will be easier to sell to the Russian public, and it will lay the groundwork for meaningful structural reforms.

"I think the Montana Plan is dy-na-mite!" Walker said.