18 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”

  1. That’s a lot of nothing! I wonder how US numbers would appear if they included all individuals that are eligible to work but aren’t, instead of only those drawing employment benefits.

  2. Andalusia chose socialism after their fellow-travellers bombed those trains, unemployment there is irrelevant, they don’t care about it as long as they can bathe in their ideology.

  3. What is Spain going to do to curb the incline in the above graph? As the writer of the article asks in his last bit, what would it take to reduce unemployment to 20% ? He’d mentioned a stimulus.. 🙂
    I expect war actually, in this generation of spaniards.
    The solution lays in doing the unthinkable, and doing the unthinkable, is never done until it is too late.

  4. Another 6 percent and they can call it ‘Weimar-lusia’…
    Cheers
    Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  9. Spain’s cure for its unemployment is fairly straightforward. It needs to withdraw from the Euro completely and immediately. Then reinstitute the peseta, have it fall to its natural level. This means a large jump in products produced outside Spain and still on the Euro. Effectively it cuts workers’ wages, but it also cuts employment costs greatly.
    It’s very simple. The Euro is a scheme whereby Germany’s industry is effectively supported by a currency that none of the rest of the Euro-zone can afford. If the Euro is dissolved and all of these countries go back to their national currencies, it’s Germany that will experience the high unemployment and industrial recession that the Euro has created for everyone else.
    The Spaniards have the right general direction of cutting their government deficits, but this alone will only create more misery. They need to get out of the Euro as well.
    No, it won’t be war. If countries walk away from the Euro, there’s really nothing much the Germans can do about it.

  10. Hey, collectivism works – just give it time to kick the bugs out, say another 2-300 years.

  11. In other news, half the pizza in Italy is made by…
    …wait for IT…
    … Egyptians.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10023741/Shortage-of-pizza-makers-as-Italians-are-too-proud.html
    Now the story makes a big deal of the Italian kids being “too proud” to flip a pizza. Personally I doubt this very much. I think it much more likely that the kids -can’t- take the pizza flipper job because the pay is too low and it will frig up their gubermint benefits.
    Egyptians in Italy by contrast don’t get any benefits, so they can take the crappy pay.
    Begs the question, who’d be making the pizza if the Egyptians weren’t swarming over the borders of Europe in their freaking millions.

  13. Our company had business in Spain but now our rep there is just in despair. Nothing is happening. No business in Spain.

  14. Ah yes.
    Evidence that Spaniards are such hard working Europeans.
    Oh,wait. I forgot. Europeans don’t work.

  15. Robert, of course there’s no business in Spain. The housing bubble has collapsed, wiping out banks and homeowners’ equity. So no one has any investable capital any more. Spain’s industry has also gone. Spain had a significant mining industry, but that’s been wiped out by the high cost of renewable electricity and EU environmental mandates. And what shipbuilding and textiles manufacturing it had has largely been vaporized by Asian competition.
    Spain’s role in the European Union was low-cost labour manufacturing. That’s what fueled it in the 1980s. The rise of Asian manufacturing, particularly China, has crushed it. And it never had the very high end industrial production of Germany.

  17. Excellent comment on the thread. We were in Spain 2 years ago and it, on the surface, was great. People packed the restaurants and bars, dressed well, and seem to be living the good life. My Spanish brother in law tells a different story of what live is really like from his relatives in Spain and its not good.
    “Jorge
    I am a Spaniard who has been living 16 years away from my original country. I am now an US citizen living in Massachusetts. Sometimes I have nightmares in which I am travelling back to Spain. Honestly I would not go back to Spain even if I had a good job, because Spain is a synonym of corruption: corruption is widespread in the country and reaches all people at all scales, from the king to the middle class people. Spain has no longer been a dictatorial regime since the 70s, so blaming the Spanish politicians is a cheap argument, because they have been voted by the citizens again and again. There are politicians in Spain who have been governing cities/regions for two decades and since their first day they did an awful job. Now you see the results.
    In my opinion, the Spanish crisis is very different from the EU crisis: it is a crisis produced by corruption and the moral decadence of the Spanish population. They still live in a “civil war” dream and they vote on purpose to bad politicians just to upset other people who have different political ideas. There are two main big parties in Spain: PP (right) and PSOE (left). Both are corrupt and do not care about people. Small parties like IU (extreme left-wing party) or PNV, ERC, CiU (radical nationalists) have only one interest: to divide the country.
    My advice for you: if you go on vacation to Spain and you have no problems (theft, fraud, etc), you will think “what a nice country!” Yes, the landscapes are nice and you probably will enjoy the food, beach and museums. However, living in Spain is the worst experience you could have. After I escaped from Spain, I lived for five years in the UK, France, Poland and now in the US. All countries have good and bad things but Spain is the worst place I have known due to the behaviour of their citizens and their lack of respect for democracy and culture.
    There are exceptions, obviously. Since the beginning of this economical crisis many people are escaping from Spain, mostly professionals (engineers, scientists, etc) because the salaries in that country are ridiculous and the working conditions are miserable. The trade unions are useless and they are even more corrupt than politicians. Medium and small enterprises are closing or leaving the country because bureaucracy and corruption is killing them.
    Just think about one thing: there are nearly 80 universities (70 of them are public) in Spain and NO ONE is in the world top 100. Why? The answer: if you would like to work at a Spanish university, your CV will not be valued. It will be more important if you have a relative, friend or “godfather” at the University. I am sorry to be so cruel, but I do not feel sorry about Spain: they dig their own grave and now they have discovered that they are dying.”

  18. Spain is no different than any other country will be when the debt bubble pops. Add up the number of Americans on unemployment, food stamps and disability. Over 50% of Americans take more than they put into their government. Truth be known it probably isn’t that different than Canada.
    How will the Dippers solve unemployment in BC after they shut down all industrial development? Simple. They will hire thousands of new employees who will in turn keep an eye on all other citizens to ensure Victoria’s directives are enforced. They have learned their lessons from organized labor who are pros at feathering their nests.

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