by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Liars, Damned Liars, and Spanish Banks
By Don Quijones: “Spain’s banks are back on track,” the Spanish Banking Association announced to great fanfare. That’s the official story. But these banks reported financial results that “bear no relation to reality.”
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Another Day, Another Political Scandal In Spain’s ‘Mafia State’
By Don Quijones: Political corruption has already become synonymous with political leadership in Spain. But now there’s a spectacle of political hubris and impunity so farcical and obscene that it leaves no doubt in one’s mind: Spain is run by a mafia state!
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Peaceful Indignation Turns to Violent Rage in Rajoy’s Spain
By Don Quijones: It was the first nationally coordinated grassroots response to repressive social and economic policies and widespread corruption of Spain’s ruling political caste. But it descended into violence– as the government is playing a dangerous game.
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Which Country Is Europe’s Biggest Narco State?
By Don Quijones: Revelations of a dirty, big business in Europe, and of the role banks play to make it possible. In fact, during the financial crisis, European banks “were as good as saved by the global drug trade.”
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Jitters Mount Over Prospect of Catalonian Independence
“You’re making a grave mistake,” the CEO of Catalonia’s megabank La Caixa allegedly told Catalonian President Artur Mas. Like many big shots, he’s fretting over the prospect of independence from Spain – an existential threat to the region’s banks.
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Banker Farce: Spanish Bank CEO Launches Moral Crusade Against Political Corruption
By Don Quijones: “We have to fight corruption in order to build a new model of more sustainable and fairer growth,” pontificated the CEO of BBVA, a Spanish TBTF bank.
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Round Two of the Global Financial Sector’s Takeover of Spain
By Don Quijones: When it comes to dodgy landlords, few have it quite as bad as the tenants of a number of housing projects in Spain who were notified that the government had sold their units to an innocent-sounding investment fund called Cibeles.
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Mind-Game Of “Fixing” Europe’s Big Zombie Banks
Danièle Nouy, chair of the ECB’s newfangled bank regulator that doesn’t exist yet, had a term for it: “do whatever has to be done” so that the banking sector “is seen as sound and safe and transparent.” Is seen as…. Smoke and mirrors.
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Impunity and Excess, Desperation and Violence: Two Worlds Collide in Spain
By Don Quijones: Normally these two worlds co-exist relatively peaceably, barely cognizant of the other’s existence. Every now and then, their paths may intersect, only to quickly decouple. But this week they suffered a head-on clash.
