For a more informed but in its way equally disturbing analysis of the Spanish debt problem try Edward Hugh
I think a lot of these “reports” use sources like his but misrepresent the particular context for their own hyped up purposes. The reality is quite bad enough.

Golem,

I did a bit of looking but I am getting a bit lost to be honest and I don’t have any clear conclusions to offer on what I did find.

Issues that did surface were arrears ( in all types of payments ) in the economy, ‘black’ money as an unknown in the property market ( it is believed to play a big role) and I was coming to the conclusion spanish mortgages given out at the peak 2006-2008 were at a lower portions of debt to price and were far lower than Ireland ( the only clear comparison i had ) about €100,000 less on average per unit. Perhaps its not as leveraged as people may asume.

Inhabitation patterns ( cultural ) and dwelling types ( mainly apartments ) , internal migration ( for work ) particularly to Madrid really make it difficult to apply rules of thumb from other countries to Spain about vacancy numbers in the market too. There are really big regional differences in price and vacancy rates. There always have been.

I did notice a bit of inaccurate Spain bashing going on in the western financial media, in a similar vein to the report above. Perhaps that’s one real story thats been stumbled on here.

Thats it.

Here is a link to an eloquent documentary on the looting of the Argentinean state around the 90s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsqa-YHE36A&feature=related

A remarkable quote at about minute 48:

“We’ve elaborated our Ten Commandments, the “Menemist” [after the president Menem] Ten Commandments for the reform of the state. Commandment number 1… Nothing of what should belong to the state will remain in its hands”

I often wonder like some of the posters in here: where is the face of this movement? Occupy was maybe a bit too wild and disjointed to really draw in a giant crowd of intellectual faithful to the cause, although it did kind of represent the perpetually mind shagged state of a people who have had the truth hidden from them for a time – and it did leave a scar or two.

In all likelihood the movement has a face we’ve never seen before. Where people do not come together to learn from the one book, from the one voice – but educate themselves, coming together en masse to share what they have learnt. An almost pure form of education, though bohemian in shape.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-economic-crisis-academics-20120425,0,6378780.story

For those as curious as I about Weiner’s previous article for the L.A. Times that kicked it all off.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-weiner-youth-revolt-economics-20120411,0,6994951.story

Good to see the kids demanding better service though.

I also wonder how much of a role censorship will play in the attempt to curtail the intellectual revolution.

gt / John

What we are witnessing is the diminishing returns to complexity.

Complexity has risen dramatically in how we interact, in knowledge, in business operations, in law, in politics etc.

It was the motive force for innovation & development, but this needn’t mean that more complexity will always lead to better outcomes.

Joseph Tainter asserts that the return on complexity is non linear and can start to turn downwards (see Fig 4.1):

http://dieoff.org/page134.htm

Thanks for setting it out like that, much appreciated.

I still can’t shake this image of armies of Omni-present cancerous blob like creatures roaming the planet, sucking all the great ideas into the void that is ‘the market’. The brilliance of our creative juices ends up feeding an ever shrinking number of people as we approach some sort end game duality, with two uber-blobs shooting each other’s ideas out of the big blue yonder.

Or am I just being a tad dramatic?

John A. Missell AIA •
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-swedish-model/2012/04/25/gIQA3rvvgT_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
1 hour ago• Like

Roger Lewis • John that article is spinning the Swedish solution to its banking crisis as an example of how austerity can work the Swedes held those resposible for it to account the banks they guaranteed the banks who’s own shareholders had to recapitalise with their own money they were not bailed out on a no questions asked your too big to fail way. That is the Swedish lesson a curious type of Jante lagen, tall poppies are kind of rarer in Sweden certainly they are not mythologised.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/…/publication14098_en.pdf

Abstract: This study presents the main features of the Swedish approach for resolving the
banking crisis of 1991-93 by condensing them into seven policy lessons. These concern (1)
the importance of political unity behind the resolution policy, (2) a government blanket
guarantee of the financial obligations of the banking system, (3) swift policy action where
acting early was more important than acting in exactly the right manner, (4) an adequate legal
and institutional framework for the resolution procedures including open-ended public
funding, (5) full disclosure of information by the parties involved, (6) a differentiated
resolution policy minimizing moral hazard by forcing private sector participants to absorb
losses before government financial intervention, and (7) the proper design of macroeconomic
policies to simultaneously end the crisis in both the real economy and the financial sector.

points 5 and 6 are paramount those are the elements the austerity narrative wants us to miss Austerity for the bankers.
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=95918404&gid=3056216&commentID=78224677&trk=view_disc&ut=1SUOjrHeYkDRc1

This is from a discussion over in the economist Linked in Group I often link back to here or to Econosophy and other musings and post links of posts from comments here. The mainstream delusional spin machine has many cheerleaders and a bit of socratic enquiry done politely and gently can’t do any harm as far as I can tell.

I know one shouldn’t laugh at ones own jokes but I really do quite like this one.

summing up the American dream versus the societal reality in short America has Plastic Tits and has convinced herself that they are real and every one else needs a pair just like hers.

In 1980, the Hunt brothers thought that the fiat gig was up and cornered the silver market. Turns out that it wasn’t and Volcker’s actions basically ended up buying an additional 30 years. Those actions could never be repeated today because the system and more specifically the debtload couldn’t handle it (the amount needed to be paid annually based on interest rates).

Then Greenspan came along and started to blow bubbles, got some pretty good mileage that eventually peaked with the dot-com top.

Next injection came in 2001 after 9/11…..bought 6-7 years only and peaked with the real estate top.

Next came 2008, with the shock and awe of Paulson and the ‘end of the financial world’…and with all the hoopla, the fiat injection only bought less than 4 years.

See the pattern?

Law of diminishing returns. No matter how big the QE3 is this year, it will either fail completely or at best buy only one year or so before the failure arrives. The system is requiring increasingly larger injections for smaller returns.

http://i40.tinypic.com/1exd0l.jpg