Rose Lapp (Reporter)
AS the Spanish economy continues to worsen, the public debt exceeds 20,000 per person for the first time.
During the past year and a half under Rajoy’s government, the debt has increased by 20 points and €200,000 million.
And just in the month of May, the per-person debt rose 500 euros, up to 20,060. The total monthly increase in debt reached 23,000 million, which is 90% of the country’s GDP.
Though the government insists that the economy is stabilizing, financial experts are not convinced, saying the crisis and debt are working in a vicious cycle; as one increases, so must the other.
How can José Griñán say there are green shoots of recovery when the debt mountain wipes out all the gains? Spain is just not telling the truth. Truth is, it’s another massive bail-out or Euro exit.
Time for Spanish gunboats to threaten tourists and fishermen in Gibraltar again? Desperate diversional therapy required…
Green shoots, more like smoke and mirrors by a suspect Government?
“With the permission of Allah almighty, The economy of the Spain shall be recovered and shall be improved prosperously.
It’s very important that the investments in the both of the private and public sectors in the economical fields that to be improved.
@ Moham….blah blah, If one needs His permission it is logical to assume that it is He that is preventing such recovery. Religion (of all persuasions) causes enough problems as it is without introducing it into state economics. The politicians are quite capable of screwing it up as it is.
Some easy fixes…
1)restrict globalisation. Dont buy ‘made in china’. If companies want to use slave labour and not local resources then stop paying them.
2) stop corruption. make polititions, accountants, notarios, lawyers, and the like accountable for EVERY penny. If money is missing people should go to jail for theft.
3) financial institutions will NOT be saved. If a bank goes under then it goes under. And the gov will take ALL possessions from employees – houses, cars, investments, cash, other bank accounts, etc. So instead of some manager STILL getting millions in bonuses, he gets a bill or jail!
Its so easy.
The Spanish debt is the price we pay for an incompetent and German dominated government decision to ignore the theft and miss-management of clients’ money by the Banks combined with the insane decision that the clients who had been robbed should replace the money that had been stolen from them.
The Spanish debt is also a cost involved in such a small country having 17 (or is it 18?) presidents, 17 (or is it 18?) parliaments and 17 (or is it 18?) civil services. How does a country as small as Spain expect to recover the costs involved in such a mountenous bureaucracy? There are 17 layers of officials whose single purpose in life is to justify their own existence by being as obstructive as they can.
It is said that 85% of university students want to join the government or civil service. Let’s face it, there is plenty of room for jobsworth administrators to build their dangerous and intractable sections to absorb them.
How is it possible for a local president to earn more than the national president? How is it possible for 17 presidents to delay and/or modify any decrees or acts passed by the national government?
Why is it necessary for a small country like Spain to introduce its own common market? What degree of insanity and incompetence can possibly justify the huge swathes of paperwork that was necessary for a small business man to operate in different areas of Spain?
It is long past time that Spain became a unified whole and acted as such. How can anybody outside Spain possibly begin to understand that an agreement with the national government is not necessarily acceptable to the local governments?
How are tax payers supposed to continue financing so many layers of counter productive bureaucracy while trying to support the members of society who need their financial support?
The endemic corruption that seems to infest Spain at all levels (even my neighbours know who to bribe if they need something from the town hall) can’t be brought under control until government itself is centralised and audited.
While the government is sundered in the way it is, there is no national will for things to improve.
Local employers are happy sliding under the radar and paying for work on the black economy.
Taxation is one of the biggest disincentives to employers to increase their payrolls.
Many workers are so disillusioned that they will gladly join the slave markets and work with no contract for a bit of cash in hand.
The fiscal debt of Spain is an artificial creation and could be enormously reduced by centralising all government, massively reducing the civil service payrolls, treating the banks as the delinquent and greedy organisations that they are and making it possible for a business to comply with simpler employment regulations (where ever they are in Spain) and bring their payrolls under the tax and social security umbrellas.
Most of all, if the EU continues to militate against common sense solutions to Spanish problems, Spain must withdraw, regain her independence and climb out from under the beligerant dictatorship of Germany.
Arthur, your comments are the most sensible that I have read on this story, at least you have a sensible solution apart from an opinion.
This country is definately in the trouble it is in now because of all the paperwork that needs to be filled out to start a business, and then it doesn’t end there, once you have a business they throw more paperwork at you on a daily basis – no wonder they need so many civil servants.
I read in this paper only a few days ago that only 6% of Spaniards want to start their own business because of the govenment and the paperwork involved – much easier to be a civil servant.
How did Germany make Spain so corrupt and inefficient again? And how did Germany make Spain have 17 autonomous regions who couldn’t organise a pi** up in a brewery? Spain is not a small country; the EU project needs Spain to be a part of the EU in order to survive, which of course is why Spain gets so many generous extensions to EU imposed deadlines. Sadly, the changes Spain so badly needs will take hundreds of years to implement.
Fred, I have no idea why you are asking silly questions about Germany. Germany is responsible for the assinine idea that people who have had their money stolen should be responsible for replacing the money for the bankers who not only stole it but frittered it away.
Germany is also responsible for the ridiculous idea that an economy can be healed by starving it.
Whether Spain leaves the EU or not may well depend upon just how well the EU can survive if the British public gets its wish for a referendum and votes to withdraw. The EU will not survive without a major paymaster.
Spain is a small country and, with the will of the people and a strong government could well drag itself out of the mire into which it so blithely leapt not so very long ago.
Yes, banks are evil, we know, but people still over-borrowed and were greedy and detached from reality. People frittered money away too, did they not? As for Spain being a ‘small country’, their GDP per person is by nowhere near the weakest.
Germany certainly needs to relax on the austerity dogma, but Germany did not make Spain’s debt crisis all by itself. Nothing silly about that, it’s just an obvious fact. Spain can only grow out of this crisis, as I’ve said many times before.
Fred, you are missing the point all together.
The root of the current crisis is the lemming-like rush of European banks to follow the American banksters into the sub-prime mortgage market.
I doubt that many people in Spain over-borrowed withouit the active connivance and encouragement of their venal bank managers.
Only in Spain can a bank steal from a client by selling an unsupportable product and then, when the support proves its worth, NOT ONLY retrieve the over-valued asset that put the client in harms way BUT ALSO insist that the robbed client continues to pay the unsupported (and unsupportable) loan.
The Banks in Spain are ring fenced by legislation that effectively puts them above the law of the land.
Gambling debts are unenforceable unless it was a bank that did the gambling and for whom the losses can be legally reassigned to innocent parties.
Not having the weakest GDP per capita means absolutely nothing if internal political expenditure is out of control and external, ruinous, dictatorial controls are being exercised.
It is difficult for an industrial nation like those in northern Europe to understand the economies of basically agrarian nations in southern Europe. This difficulty to understand has been transformed into a sublime ignorance by the German chancellor and her advisers.
We need you more on this website Arthur. Someone thinking at last. Thanks!
Fred you’re up against it here lol.
Banks cannot be blamed 100% for everything. Sure, the evil banks over lent and went out of their way to lend to people who had no chance of repaying their debts if a problem ever arose, but people _still_ borrowed beyond their means and now the crash leaves them unable to repay their debts. People are greedy too, just like banks are. Banks always win in our current financial system – that’s the price we pay in a capitalist system that we all use and rely upon very day.
Unfortunately Arthur, you have not grasped the fact that people, themselves, also made bad financial decisions. In Greece the BBC did a documentary on how Porsche Cayenne sales went through the roof before the crisis, and now they sit on the road gathering dust. Did the bank managers force the people to purchase all these luxury cars?
Arthur, you speak like an economist (are you one?). What we need is less “econospeak” and more common sense and less silly “blame it all on Germany” nonsense. It’s easy to find scapegoats when you’re desperate for someone to blame.
Arther Webster,
it’s you who is missing the point and quoting a lot of disinformation.
Historically the Spanish have always been corrupt and inefficient. They had centralised government and it was called Fascism, that’s why they will resist control from the centre and you need to pay attention to all the corruption at the centre in Madrid.
The Spanish are not one racial group (you missed that one too, neither the Catalans or the Euskadi want to be governed from Madrid, if you studied a bit of Spanish history you would know why.
Cataluyna and Pais Vasco have not been an agrarian for a long time and have an industrial history to equal anything in northern Europe.
Spain was not involved in the US prime scandal as you are trying to imply – they had their own and an idiot could see this coming years before their property collapse.
As Fred has said nothing will make the Spanish change their stupid short sighted mentality – it will take centuries to do that.
Don’t forget that after only one century of looting Central and South America, Spain went bankrupt 4 times.
Centralism is a form of Fascism however you dress it up. Autonomous regional government does not have to be corrupt through and through.
Ironically you blame the Germans, something the English who are of German origin anyway love to do, totally ignoring the fact that Germany is in fact made up of lots of little states who have lots of autonomy written into the unification treaty put together by Bismark.
Germany is successful because they know how to work for a common purpose, no matter what differences they may have, same goes for the Dutch – having lived and worked in both countries I have first hand knowledge of their mentality.
Altogether your thesis on Spain’s problems is laughable and bears no relation to the hard cold facts
Fred, blame is not the issue. Blame is one of those stupid ideas created by commentators who look but don’t know what they see.
The word is RESPONSIBILITY!
We can start with the fiasco of the sub-prime mortgages but then we have to look at the other ways in which banks and finance houses have crippled world economies.
What is the logic of treating businesses like horses in a race? Why do governments permit gamblers to manipulate the values of companies by massive buying and selling of stocks, shares and bonds?
Where is the logic in actively encouraging the “futures” market? Why should Banks divert their clients’ money into purchases of the next years rubber, coffee or cacao crop and then be allowed to actively connive at ensuring the price of the crop will increase so that they can make their ruinous profits?
Why are Banks and finance houses allowed to manipulate the value of a currency by simply saying it is not worth face value or it is worth more than face value. We are all well aware that currency, for ordinary people, is nothing but an institutionalised system of IOUs. We know that there are very few countries that actually possess the assets to support the amount of currency they have in circulation.
The Federal Reserve, probably the biggest private bank, is showing that it has absolutely no intention of exercising dominion over the US$ – instead, it is now printing an additional $50,000,000,000 worth of notes EACH MONTH!
I am not desperate for someone to blame and I really feel sorry for all those politicians who are too scared to lay out the fiscal facts as I have done here. Do you think Rajoy is not aware of the cleft stick in which he finds himself? Do you think that Cameron is really happy to know that the Great British Five Pound Note is only just worth the paper it is printed on?
The strangle hold that the banks and finance houses have been given over national money is the most destructive aspect of all western economies because they ANSWER TO NO-ONE!
Banks have been claiming huge losses. Do you HONESTLY believe that is the true situation? One of the easiest ways to avoid paying taxes is to make a financial loss. The bigger the loss, the lower the tax bill. Indeed, the tax bill can become so low that refunds can be claimed of tax paid in earlier years. Of course, the wet dream of the banksters came true when governments insisted that those whose money had been stolen and squandered by them should be replaced at no cost to the banks by the victims of the banks.
The sheer opacity of banking practice and the pathetically ineffective “controls” over their behaviour and trading reporting is the biggest protection that the banks have. They hide their responsibility in pages and pages of quotes from experts (drips under pressure) to justify their thieving ways.
Everybody should be aware that a bank that is run efficiently, honestly and prudently CANNOT MAKE A LOSS.
I guess we have a lot of turnips on the boards of too many Banks.
No, I am not an economist – I’m just another victim who saw the robber telling the pólice that it was my fault he stole from me.
Lots a blabla…the simple fact is that corruption in Spain is looked at as culture, same as animal torture and lying…lying is a national sport…i lived in different countries,,,but never have i met a people so corrupt, false with words and irritating as here in Spain…lovely place though…
Stuart and Luc, I ask you both to go to a mirror and have a good long look at your reflections.
If ever there was a need to weed out the blinkered and blind, you two represent that need.
Presumably you would rather have Spain split into its component parts and become seventeen individual members of the EU. I’m not quite sure what you think this will gain but your opinion is as valid as mine.
The idea of reducing England to the historical kingdoms that once existed (at about the same level of development as now exists in Spain) would be intriguing.
I have lived and worked in Germany and still have good friends living there. They will tell you that the current parlous state of Germany is a huge cause for concern. It seems certain that Merkel will not be re-elected and there is a genuine fear of Germany playing second fiddle in Europe to France.
You both talk as though Spain has a special case to answer but, in reality, the corruption that has been exposed and investigated is no more and no less than infests the rest of Europe – the Spanish are simply more honest about it.
The days of politicians being in office to serve their countries have been relegated to the pages of the Brothers Grimm. There are no politicians in the UK who are worth the space they take up in Westminster. The country is in severe decline because there is a total lack of will to grasp the nettle and deal with the relegation of natural born British citizens to the positions of somewhere below second class.
Leadership is a quality that has been outlawed by the need to pacify the vociferous representatives of minorities so that all MPs now walk a very thin line described by the Bill of Human Rights as administered by Brussels.
I think that we who live in Spain should be very grateful that, even though we have a massive over-supply of Members of Parliament, we do not have the spectacle of failed MPs fighting tooth and claw to get aboard the many European gravy trains fuelled by the money that the Banks have not managed to steal.
If there is any such thing as honest corruption, Spain is at least open enough to acknowledge it.
I’ll ignore the ancient history of times when moral values were very different to what they are today or I would have to also comment upon the massive muder mystery tours carried out by English soldiers against heathens with a papal dispensation to give them absolution for any sins committed and the declaration that the killing of heathens was not murder but the work of God and mother church.
Nobody ever learned from history and they sure won’t start to now!
Arthur Webster: Your quote “The country is in severe decline because there is a total lack of will to grasp the nettle and deal with the relegation of natural born British citizens to the positions of somewhere below second class”
This is interesting opinion and appears to explain much of your thinking. I was born in Britain and frequently go back for visits, at no point have I ever felt like a second class citizen, far from it. It’s the fairness mentality of the majority of UK citizens that recognise other people / cultures as having rights. Like so many in Spain you come across as an outdated old bigot who couldn’t hack it at home so you decided to escape. Maybe the mentality was a little too advanced an modern for your liking.
“Blame is one of those stupid ideas created by commentators who look but don’t know what they see.”
Arthur, it was you who started out by blaming Germany lol. Your rag is really one against the entire economic system, and I agree that it is all abhorrent. But what’s the alternative? You can’t regulate greed and profit.
Michael, please do not let naïvety get in the way of a good argument or discussion.
I too was born in Britain although I keep in touch by telephone rather than physical visits.
I speak to my brother almost every day and I am horrified at many of the things he tells me. For example, he recently needed urgent dental care and had to take an interpreter into the surgery because the dentist was Polish and spoke no English. His follow up visit was much easier because the Spanish dentist on duty spoke good English.
My brother is the carer for his wife and is forever fighting bureaucracy for the help that she needs. Even though they have a good medical reason for needing two bedrooms, they have to pay the bedroom tax (or not receive their full allowance) while immigrants who have been “salted” into the area have no problems and are able to constantly apply for benefits (vouchers for furniture, clothing, re-decoration &c) to which he is not entitled because he does not have the necessary “status” (that is the word used by the jobsworths to explain his situation).
My wife also lives in England and she, too, sees how she is often relegated to the bottom of a list when immigrants have been “relocated” in her area.
While I cannot agree with the radical proposals of UKIP and EDL, I do manage to stand back and understand why the ground-swell of public opinion is now swinging behind them.
Just as living in Spain gives me a reasonable over-view of what is happening and how the Spanish people are reacting, I would not consider that a visit to the UK would allow me to state that the normal good will of the British has been maintained and that they continue to welcome hundreds of people every day who have been exported from France (primarily) contrary to EU regulations.
There is no shortage of indications that the Great British Public is becoming more and more aware of the crippling cost of Tony Blaire’s (failed) vote buying, open door immigration policy and their disillusion with Westminster for not only NOT stopping or limiting immigration but actually LOSING 500,000 illegal immigrants. One thing I hear constantly from people in England is that the Home Office might not know where these people are but the post office does because it delivers cheques and claim forms to them.
Finally, in any discussion, to resort to name calling and snide comments simply identifies you as someone who needs to learn how to create and express a rebuttal.
FRED – I did not “blame” Germany, I placed the responsibility for the current crisis firmly at their door. It was Germany (actually it was a Franco-German axis) that decided to ring fence the Banks and it was Germany that insisted upon the crippling reduction in money supply as some sort of lunatic “cure” for economies that were already struggling. RESPONSIBILITY!!!
As it happens, the governments of the individual nations within the EU have all the legislation necessary to rein in the banksters but the creation of the European Central Bank has been tacitly accepted by the Brussels unelected and unrepresentative faux dictatorship as the effective repeal of that legislation.
If you can refute that, please do. Snide comments and refusal to comprehend that which has been written are not ways to progress a discussion. I have stated my honest opinions and I have been waiting for reasoned responses. Hyperbole is not a response.
Arthur, I’ve already said many times that the euro project is doomed to failure as it is impossible to align rich and poor counties economically. Germany will always be viewed as a ‘leader’ of Europe because of their powerhouse economy, but I don’t think their people sought out this leadership role. You want me to refute opinions I don’t agree with, and you seem to be getting very frustrated when people don’t agree with you. It seems banks can’t do anything right. When they overleand, we get a debt crisis. When they underlend, we get an austerity crisis. Seems to me we need a middle ground.
Btw, hyperbole is one thing, but you are a Hyberbore, Arthur.
aRTHUR -”You both talk as though Spain has a special case to answer but, in reality, the corruption that has been exposed and investigated is no more and no less than infests the rest of Europe – the Spanish are simply more honest about it.”
I disagree with that comment. When I lived in Spain corrpution was in your face every day if you were trying to get ahead. If you are just retired and don’t have to deal with the authorities then you may not notice it as much.
Regarding the 17 layers, that does make sense. When one company buys other Companies, they don’t keep 17 M.D.’s, 17 HR Directors… For the public as well, there are tasks that you have to duplicate if you go between regions in Spain. The Country is in a mess and it needs an overhaul but there is no enthusiasm to do this. A great proportion of the voters are public workers and then add the overpaid like the Air Traffic Controllers on 100’s thousands of euros PA, people on unrealistic working contracts that receive 33 weeks redundancy for every year they work there, they are up against it. The Country is holding itself back. Why would you set up a major Company in Spain, plenty of easier, cheaper Countries to do this in.
I do not agree with your later xenophobic comments Arthur!
Arthur,
I live in the UK. I’m glad you’re over there rather than over here.
What a tool.
So, to draw a comparison.
My mortgage is in a hell of a mess because of a combination of things; I don’t earn enough, I don’t collect all of my debs efficiently enough and my mortgage lender has put up my rates. My mortgage lender is heavily in partnership with another, bigger and more financially secure lender who is steering it towards stability – this may not be to my benefit in the short term.
According to Arthur, I need to tell my bank that frankly I’ve had enough of them and withdraw to sort my affairs out for myself.
Can’t see that going too well myself.
Something else the oh so wise has omitted in his ‘Simple’ solution is subsidies………….
Fred, hyperbore? No rebuttal, then. Pity.
Edward, xenophobic? My son died in England on Saturday, 20th July after several years of constant medical supervision. His widow, who is understandably distraught, has been refused all assistance from the Social Services because a post mortem has been called for. Not only that, after trying to resuscitate my son during the 30+ minutes she waited for help, she found herself ejected from her home for several hours when he was declared dead by the ambulance staff. She is being treated like a murder suspect, her home was subjected to a massive crime scene examination while she was denied access to her pets which were massively distressed by the white clad army and, in the heat of recent days, were denied water. The police made no mention of their activities when they contacted me. Normally, a death can be certified by any doctor who has atended the patient within 24 hours or has habitually reviewed his symptoms. Not a single doctor who had attended my son in the previous seven days was approached and I can assure you, the neighbours of my daughter-in-law are all of the opinion that her only crime is being White and British (and “No” they are not all white and British – some are immigrants who have been housed in the small village as part of the Westminster “diversification” programme). Xenophobic? You bet!
Mor – thank you for those few words. Are you an MP by any chance?
Richard, like many people you fell for the blandishments of the banks while many of us who worked in real estate could see the bubble starting to collapse.
You also helped the phenominally rich estate agencies by paying unsustainable levels of commission and the lawyers by failing to consult with a fiscal expert who was aware of the threatening implosion.
If your circumstances have fallen so your earnings no longer enable you to service your mortgage, you do need to speak to the mortgage holder and try to give yourself a break – especially if it is being mentored by a larger organisation.
I am sorry to see that you, too, are unable enter a discussion without derision and name calling. This is the side of many people that I simply do not understand. Your opinions are as valid as mine but it seems that you would rather have opinions that denigrate an individual that address the subject at hand. Disagree with my by all means, that is the manner of a discussion, but this pathetic recourse to beligerance is no way to convince me that any opinion you might hold has greater merit than mine.
Arthur, you have my rebuttal – I don’t fundamentally agree with your claim that Germany caused Spain’s financial crisis. The crisis was fundamentally a world crisis. Banks run governments and the financial industry cannot be regulated 100%. This thread has gone off-topic now, so all the best.
Thanks guys. i always enjoy reading the opinions of OAPs.
Good morning Arthur, firstly I am sorry for your recent loss. I too have had to deal with coroners courts and police investigations into a family members death.
Re your comment “they have to pay the bedroom tax (or not receive their full allowance) while immigrants who have been “salted” into the area have no problems and are able to constantly apply for benefits”
As you worked in real estate you should be aware of the regulations concerning benefits in the UK?
The Housing Act 1988 with an amendment order in 1990 made all private landlord tenants who claim housing benefit subject to the “bedroom tax” This has recently changed to include local authority and housing association tenants with the same size criteria rules. So now EVERYONE who claims housing benefit is subjected to this rule to ensure they are not paid more benefits than they are entitled to. The acts do not mention colour, creed or race and you should not bring this into your argument about the amount your brother is paid in benefits.
Concerning tenants who are relocated from Westminster, is it not cheaper for the public purse to pay cheaper rents in your wifes small village than the high rents in central London?
Perhaps you might like to take this up with Karen Buck the MP for Westminster North who is very knowledgable about housing problems and the regulations.
Sorry this is off topic.
My condolences.
Where someone dies unexpectedly the Police are duty bound to attend on behalf of the Coroner.
Where the death is unexpected they have to make a decision about whether or not the death can or can’t be explained. If the senior officer attending cannot satisfy themselves then it has to be treated as a potential crime scene – no half measures.
If the deceased Dr had seen them 10 minutes prior to death having treated them for the past 10 years but not expected death they couldn’t, and shouldn’t supply a death certificate. This must be the case or there’d be no post mortem. The coroners officer (not a Police Employee) would have contacted his Dr the following morning.
You’re clearly concerned, I’d hop on a plane and go see the officer in charge, it’d probably help a bit.
Sorry for your loss Arthur but I have to pull you up.
I don’t agree with you and we’ll leave it there.
As for “I’m sorry that you, too, are unable to enter into discussion without derision and name calling”
The reason you got my goat and provoked response was your arrogant;
” Stuart and Luc, I ask you both to go to a mirror and have a good long look at your reflections.
If ever was there a need to weed out the blinkered and the blind, you two represent that need”.
When you’ve been hoisted by your own petard don’t go crying foul.
It seems that, in my grief, I have taken this stream off track – and I apologise.