Spain Pain-Everything under the Sun

The World has been focusing on Greece for quite some time now. With government being on/off on an intra day basis, focus will shoft once again to the bigger Med countries. Italy is already feeling the heat, but what about Spain? Unemployment has hit record levels. Standing at 21.5%, this problem will haunt Spain for many years to come. Youth unemployment has created a “lost generation”, young people totally giving up on even getting a job. We hear occasionally from Spain, but it is not getting the focus the country deserves. During the reckless property bonanza, nobody thought about the future, but the the future is here, and many provinces are struggling. Local treasurers are suffering. El Pais reports;

In early July, Spain’s cities and towns were more than 37 billion euros in the red. This is the highest level of total municipal debt on record, and it comes at the worst possible time, when revenue has plummeted. The situation is so dire that some local corporations have started to fire personnel; others have been withholding payment to their providers for years; some have seen streets and squares seized over payment defaults; and then there are those that have come up with extravagant savings measures, such as turning off the traffic lights at night.

and don’t forget the corruption….

There are over one million euros in bills that he is carefully poring over, because many of them were sent by Lubasa and Piaf, two of the companies under investigation in a case of alleged illegal financing by the PP. “We are finding invoices for work that was never done,” says Serralvo.

Spain truly is everything under the Sun. Full article here.

We will hear more about the chart below….