Monday 20 August 2012

Back to reality?

Can't see that I have missed very much by being away for two weeks on my holidays. Still we seem to be stuck in a mid-summer malaise of nothing much going on bar Sport and the odd Middle Eastern war.

That is though very preferable to last summer where we had a worldwide economic disaster in August, it does make for an interesting September/October.

Spain was interesting though, it does not feel like a Country in economic meltdown in the Tourist parts at any rate. The airports are full, rental car business in full flow, no space on the beaches - 'twas ever thus. This must be a good boon for the economy there. Even the rows of unfinished housing developments seem to have thinned out a bit.

Or perhaps this is what financial crises look like, everything working well as long as money is borrowed/printed and then an almighty collapse at the end?

16 comments:

Blue Eyes said...

Interesting re what a crisis looks like. I was in Barcelona in May (I think) and I had the same thought: if I hadn't known that Spain had 25% unemployment and was about to go bust I would not have guessed from how busy everything was.

dearieme said...

Might the data be wrong? Might people be drawing the dole and working on the side?

hovis said...

People who aren't working aren't usually visible, if they are not literally on the streets you will not see them, especially if they have no money.

So I would contend that you will always see the activity going on (by its very nature) and also things will be busy and kept going along by borropwed money, until it isnt..

Electro-Kevin said...

Portugal was the same a couple of weeks back.

Lots of people wanted cash payment.

Blue Eyes said...

"People who aren't working aren't usually visible, if they are not literally on the streets you will not see them, especially if they have no money."

You don't say!

Agree it's difficult for me to compare Barcelona in Spring 2012 with say Spring 2007, but it didn't feel like a place where 25% of the population were staying at home hiding from tourists.

Nick Drew said...

it's like an army in wartime, the casualties are never on parade

Bill Quango MP said...

Greece kicking off again today.
The markets waited for you to return this year Cu before the quarterly EU equivalent of guess the weight of the cake.

"How much will it cost to kick this can 62 days down the road...because we still haven't found a way to let Greece get out but remain in and not collapse Spain and Italy and cause the Irish and Portuguese to demand a let off."



Anonymous said...

BQ,
very amusing and I think right on the button , but you forgot to mention the French banks/State, let alone the Germans.Oh and isn't there an aelection somewhere sometime in the Fall?

Anonymous said...

I kind of hope there is a controlled break-up of the Eurozone and then a rolling-back of the Delores era dream of political union with each country reclaiming sovereign control of legislation and economics.

Anonymous said...

The elite fools in politics and their banskster cronies have yet to squander the last source of wealth to keep Ponzi welfarism going - middle-class assets.

It was no surprise that last weeks ONS report concluded every Briton is now 'worth' £110,000.

Well, will say the Socialists, no-one will miss a few ££ from that, and objecting means you are a 'hoarder' and enemy of the people.

Yep, 2% mansion tax soon, then it'll be 2% on all property, 5% if privately let out (spit!) and ever onwards.

CityUnslicker said...

Anon 9.40 that is quite a wish. I don;t think Santa is going to deliver it though!

Steven_L said...

Spain is very regional, the tourist hotspots and the big cities are not as badly hit.

When I was in Brighton I saw some really desparate young Spaniards from the north east turning up looking for work. Really timid things that hardly spoke a word of English.

Spaniards don't seem to like Spaniards from other regions of Spain very much either. I also found continental europeans in general a lot more racist than the Brits.

Oh, and a lot of the eastern europeans really, really, have a grudge against us and the French for signing them over to Stalin.

Budgie said...

18 months ago I noticed eurosceptics starting to claim that the euro would collapse imminently. This was absurd and I said so.

And it hasn't happened. Not least because those at the top of the euro tree will do absolutely anything, at whatever cost to others, to keep the euro alive.

I can now see Greece being ejected "imminently" (sorry, I mean in the next 6 months). This will be portrayed as punishment for Greece. No other country wants that outcome. So there will be no contagion.

Portugal, Eire, even Spain, will get it: toe the line or be cast into the void. The euro will be strengthened and will still be around in 12 month's time.

(my previous comment on Raedwald)

Sebastian Weetabix said...

@Steven_L: 'signing them over to Stalin'?

We were hardly in a position to kick the Red Army out of Poland in 1945, were we? I can just see the knackered old British Army, having virtually run out of manpower, taking on 200 Russian divisions that were fresh from crushing the Wehrmacht.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

@Budgie: it is going to collapse in the end. That's what currency unions always do. I agree it won't be in the next 6 months but after the recession has been grinding on for another couple of years & the present crop of pygmies politicians has been metaphorically strung up all over Europe, it will end. In the final analysis northern Europeans are not willing to work harder for longer for less money to allow Greeks, Spaniards and Frenchmen retire 10 years earlier. And the southern Europeans are going to get fed up of 25%+ unemployment in perpetuity.

Budgie said...

SW, I hope you are right. I would dearly like to see the end of the euro. It would be the best outcome for the UK, and for Europe. So many eurosceptics fail to acknowledge the sheer evil animus that keeps the euro on the road. It just seems too naive to me.