Contributed by Don Quijones: Just when you thought the concept of universal justice was dead, a courageous Spanish judge, Elpidio José Silva, did what no other judge in the Western world, bar Iceland, dared to do: He refused to grant bail to a former top banker, sending him to prison before facing trial for his alleged role in Spain’s financial crisis.
Europe – Spain
Morgan Stanley’s Penny-Stock Shenanigans in Spain
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Morgan Stanley’s Penny-Stock Shenanigans in Spain
The Financial Takeover of “Our” Newspapers
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on The Financial Takeover of “Our” Newspapers
Black Market or Bust: The Stark Choice Facing Many of Spain’s Self-Employed
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Black Market or Bust: The Stark Choice Facing Many of Spain’s Self-Employed
Contributed by Don Quijones: As bank lending has dried up, Spain’s government has barely lifted a finger to help struggling self-employed workers or small enterprises. Instead, it apparently made it its mission to make their working lives as difficult as possible by ramping up their tax burden to historic highs.
Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
Contributed by Don Quijones: A daily ration of bread is now beyond the reach of roughly a billion people on planet Earth. What’s more, hunger is spreading like a pandemic, making incursions from its traditional strongholds in the global south to towns and cities across depression-hit Southern Europe. In Greece….
The Spanish Unemployment Powder Keg
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Spanish Unemployment Powder Keg
Austerity succeeded in trimming the bloated government sector. But instead of picking up the slack, the private sector destroyed jobs almost four times faster! The hope is that this fiasco will finally reverse course, that something will click and start a virtuous cycle before the unspeakable happens. But so far, it has relentlessly gotten worse.
The New “Nazis” of Spain
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The New “Nazis” of Spain
Secretary-General María Dolores de Cospedal, number two of the governing party in Spain, said that she knew she’d get criticized, “but this is pure Nazism.” The next day, she repeated it and added that going to someone’s house to “harass” him was “comparable to what occurred in the 30s in a European country.” A reference to Nazis marking the homes of Jews. But these “Nazis” are folks who are standing up to the banks and draconian mortgage laws that the government is hell-bent on protecting.
Europe’s Stark Choice: Resignation or Revolution
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Europe’s Stark Choice: Resignation or Revolution
Contributed by Don Quijones: Catalonia’s riot police unleashed the untamed fury of the state upon the protestors and cleared Barcelona’s Plaza Catalunya of all occupants. A dense ring of shell-shocked people gathered around the square. I was one of them. A child riding on his father’s shoulders held up a sign: “No soy anti sistema, el sistema es anti yo,” it said (I’m not anti-system; the system is anti-me).
Total Fiasco: Germans are the Poorest, Cypriots the Second Richest in The Eurozone
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Total Fiasco: Germans are the Poorest, Cypriots the Second Richest in The Eurozone
In March, the ECB-organized Eurozone-wide household-wealth survey results trickled out. But when the Bundesbank refused to publish the German data, insiders leaked the reason: too explosive for the bailout era because Italian households were far wealthier than German households. Shocking! And a red herring. The truth turned out to be far more shocking.
Spain’s Descent Into Banana Republicanism
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Spain’s Descent Into Banana Republicanism
Contributed by Don Quijones: Not a day goes by without a new political scandal breaking in Spain. Just the last few days, King Juan Carlos’ daughter, La Infanta Cristina, was charged with aiding and abetting her husband in his myriad scams to embezzle money from the public purse. Now ties to a known drug trafficker hit the governing party, the Partido Popular.