Global Stupid”
The next time you hear a socialist legislator or candidate ranting about GW and the last 7 years, just remember what their once Golden Boy used to get elected, “It’s Global Stupid.” Well, not quite but appropriate for today.
Spain is basking in football glory after winning the European Championship on June 29. But now that the euphoria is over, Spaniards are waking up to discover that their economy is in a free-fall without a parachute. Indeed, the country is being buried daily by an avalanche of depressing economic news, with jobless numbers spiraling upwards, and growth projections being revised downwards, faster than most Spaniards can say ¡Viva España!.
Spain has been reeling from the collapse of a housing bubble that for the last 15 years has enabled the notoriously uncompetitive economy to post some of the highest growth rates in the European Union. The Spanish Banking Association says that Spanish growth will probably be negative in 2008. By comparison, the Spanish economy grew by 3.8 percent in 2007.
Spaniards are suddenly realizing that Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has spent the better part of the last four years peddling economic snake oil. (And you want to elect obama?) Economists both at home and abroad have warned for many years that Spanish prosperity was based on the shaky foundations of a highly speculative construction sector, and that Spain was especially exposed to global financial turbulence due to its high level of private sector debt, poor competitiveness and dependence on foreign financing. But Zapatero convinced a willingly gullible electorate that they could defy economic reality through the power of positive thinking. (Sound like what’s going on now?) Courtesy of The Brussells Journal.
The turmoil we see in our housing market and economy is not the cause of world problems. The Western world has been living beyond its means for some time. One cannot give free lunch to anyone that wants it without consequences. A lesson, you the U.S. taxpayer, will soon feel severe pain from.
The chickens have come home to roost and it’s time to pay the piper, and . . . Enough corny phrases. Time to stand up and say “No more free lunch.”
