Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

To recap, Spain's effective unemployment rate is 20%.  Spain's answer to fixing the problem?
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Madrid would slash civil service pay by 5 percent this year, freeze it in 2011 and cut 13,000 public sector jobs this year in a drive to meet European Union deficit targets.
Cutting pay and jobs in a deep recession, hmm.  That's never been tried before...

Let me know how that works out for you, Zapatero.

2 comments:

  1. Sadly, I don't know that Spain had much of a choice thanks to the freak out caused by Greece (personally, I think Spain is in a much stronger position but I'm biased by having my family come from there).

    In fact, I would classify this as a similar story to the type of reactions to the financial crisis here at home. I think Obama would like to do more jobs growth, green investment, etc but is constrained by the reality that markets (specifically, black pool markets) are/were tugging the country into oblivion.

    De-coupling that link should have been his first priority, I know you're skeptical but I'm still holding out for some real action to achieve that.

    Just don't go all Cenk Uygur on me.

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  2. Argh -- inadequate Keynesianism followed by slow-motion Hooverism. We're in trouble. The EU, the U.S. states and municipalities, and underwater mortgage-holders in the U.S. are why I think we're in a W-shaped recovery -- we think we're in a V or a U, but we're heading downhill again (Or maybe it's a U followed by an L. In any case, I see this as an economic lost decade. And if it is, even a crazy teabagger might beat Obama in '12. And that will make everything even worse.)

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