Dawn

Dawn

Monday, May 18, 2009

In today’s Times, their Economics Correspondent, Anatole Kaletsky, begins his article with this bit of punch-pulling – “Last Friday the European Commission published what were arguably the most catastrophic economic statistics produced by any official institution in the capitalist world since 1945. These showed that Germany has suffered the steepest economic collapse ever recorded in a major industrialised country; and that several of the countries in Central Europe and on the periphery of the eurozone are now in a state of economic and financial meltdown comparable with Argentina, Indonesia and Russia in the 1990s or with Iceland last year.” So . . . . why is the pound still trading at only 1.12 to the euro?

Another question I’ve had for a while and which I think El Pais voiced yesterday – If Spain’s GDP hasn’t fallen as much as that of the countries above, how come unemployment here has soared so much more than elsewhere? Can it really just be the loss of high numbers of low-wage jobs in the construction industry? El País, by the way, has joined the ranks of those calling for labour and pensions reform, even though it’s left-of-centre and considered the mouthpiece of the ‘No U-turn’ socialist government. Something appears to be going on by way of softening-up treatment. Perhaps as a prelude to Edward Hugh’s “budget from Hell”

If you’ve read the above AK article and are wondering how his fear of sovereign loan defaults fits with the recent news of the EU’s decision to buy up the toxic assets of Spanish banks so as to avoid collapse and loan default here, join the club. We need your help, Charles. Meanwhile, AK’s view is that Germany will end up guaranteeing the debts of all its delinquent partners. Which is surely what the EU Commission intends. I wonder when the poor Germans will stop paying for Adolf Hitler. En passant, the name Adolf isn’t recognised by Word’s spell check. Nonetheless, I bet there’s still a few of them around in South America.

Addressing the scandal of MP expenses in the UK, the Daily Telegraph today intones that “The public's gloomy but wholly justifiable verdict is that this country can no longer claim to have higher standards of honesty and integrity in politics than other countries.” True but it manifestly still has a public that can be surprised and infuriated at this state of affairs. Which wouldn’t necessarily be the case in all its shoulder-shrugging European partners.

Closer to home, as traffic numbers plummet and competition from Oporto grows, Galicia’s three small, uncompetitive airports have responded with a master-class in folly. Each of them is going to expand so as to take customers from the others. Talk about localism. I fear it will be a while before the likes of Ryanair and EasyJet take any of them seriously. Thank God I only live 90 minutes away from Oporto’s magnificent facility.

As I’ve mentioned Galician rain a few times, I should redress the balance and say we do also get quite a lot of sun. In February and March of this year, for example, we saw little else. And today has been lovely. It’s just that, living in the Atlantic, it’s hard to know what it will be from week to week. Day to day even.

Finally, I see that Sky TV now has a Twitter Correspondent. Who is appropriately vapid. Another reason for the public to revolt.

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