The Pain in Spain is too Big to be Contained
Interest-Rates / Eurozone Debt Crisis Apr 16, 2012 - 02:25 AM GMTBy: PhilStockWorld
Depression.
Not the Economy (yet) but how I feel so far in my weekend reading. Even John Mauldin had to go against his wishes to ignore Spain this week now echos my thoughts on the subject in an excellent overview of the situation. Russ Winter has s similar view in "Bernanke and Germany Wake up to a Merda Storm" and Mish discusses Spain's emergency ban on cash transactions exceeding 2,500 Euros in an effort to clamp down on tax evaders and stop the rapid flow of money out of the country as well as the massive jump in Bank of Spain borrowing from the ECB.
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Spain (#12 Economy in the World) has gotten so bad, so fast that it has made us forget Italy (#8) and we're all ignoring France (#5), which is about to have its third revolution in just over 200 years as Socialist Francois Hollande is leading in the polls by 2.5% ahead of next weekend's election.
That's right, in France they hold elections on weekends because they actually WANT their people to participate in the Democratic process – how quaint!
This is just the first round that eliminates the also-rans – the major election is Sunday, May 6th. By the way, the #3 contender, with 14% of the vote, is Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front Party, who advocates Nationalization of Banks as well as clamping down on the "Muslim Problem," although it should be noted that the far right of France would still be considered the Left by Fox news and the GOP.
I'm not the only guy who is depressed by all this. Last week we were focused on one man in Greece who publicly committed suicide, which rallied the masses in Athens. Meanwhile, it's really an epidemic in Europe, with suicide rates up 24% in Greece, 16% in Ireland and over 15% in the overall EU and climbing rapidly according to the Lancet Study, which finds a direct correlation between unemployment and suicides.
“Financial crisis puts the lives of ordinary people at risk, but much more dangerous is when there are radical cuts to social protection,” said David Stuckler, a sociologist at the University of Cambridge, "Austerity can turn a crisis into an epidemic.”
- Phil
Philip R. Davis is a founder of Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com), a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders. Mr. Davis is a serial entrepreneur, having founded software company Accu-Title, a real estate title insurance software solution, and is also the President of the Delphi Consulting Corp., an M&A consulting firm that helps large and small companies obtain funding and close deals. He was also the founder of Accu-Search, a property data corporation that was sold to DataTrace in 2004 and Personality Plus, a precursor to eHarmony.com. Phil was a former editor of a UMass/Amherst humor magazine and it shows in his writing -- which is filled with colorful commentary along with very specific ideas on stock option purchases (Phil rarely holds actual stocks). Visit: Phil's Stock World (www.philstockworld.com)
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