And clearly, some consumers are now picking up on the warning signals. Mr. de la Peña, the civil servant in Madrid, said that he had recently transferred 80,000 euros, essentially his life savings, from Ibercaja, one of Spain’s savings banks, to Santander.
But now, with daily news reports on the prospect of Greece’s possible departure from the euro currency union, he is seriously considering converting his nest egg to British pounds.
“I’m exasperated because the situation changes every day,” he said. “But what is certain is that if Greece now leaves, it’s going to be one huge and bloody chaos.”
Spain is spiralling into the vortex of debt-deflation. This has nothing to do with Greece. It is not the result of fiscal extravagance over the past decade, or other such Wagnerian myths.
Peace always has been and always will be an intermittent flash of light in a dark history of warfare, violence, and destruction
Spains's savings banks are awash with 'assets' consisting of junky land that builders have failed to build anything on. It is worth zero. But Spain's notaries and Spain's bank managers being in league with whoever writes the cheques, it's down in the books as worth quite a bit.
Bankia was full of seven savings' banks' worth of the same, running to tens of bilions. Whoever thought that 4bn would save it needs their head examined. Bankia is full of creditors, but no assets. And the rest of the Spanish banking landscape does not look a lot better. They have not tried to sell their so-called assets cos they coudn't get anyting for them., That is what Spanish banks have always done. Sit on worthless assets for years. Why do they have such crazy branch 'networks', with three branches on every street?
So much for the so-called markets. It is all junk, and has been for years.
What a pile of bollocks that is and a damned fine reason to default: plus put every politician, broker, economist and banker on the industrial average wage.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
song lyrics in English:
"Your character has changed my friend, since you got so much money you’ve become unbearable, you've reduced my wage and raised everything else, I've even had to pawn my parrot and sell my house. I had to get two jobs just to pay for the morgage. You get into trouble and I get kicked out on the street. I don't want you, I won't even want you if you eliminate interest rates. Bankia; six lungs for your and not even a pair of gills for me."
song lyrics in English:
"Your character has changed my friend, since you got so much money you’ve become unbearable, you've reduced my wage and raised everything else, I've even had to pawn my parrot and sell my house. I had to get two jobs just to pay for the morgage. You get into trouble and I get kicked out on the street. I don't want you, I won't even want you if you eliminate interest rates. Bankia; six lungs for your and not even a pair of gills for me."
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I love it.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
song lyrics in English:
"Your character has changed my friend, since you got so much money you’ve become unbearable, you've reduced my wage and raised everything else, I've even had to pawn my parrot and sell my house. I had to get two jobs just to pay for the morgage. You get into trouble and I get kicked out on the street. I don't want you, I won't even want you if you eliminate interest rates. Bankia; six lungs for your and not even a pair of gills for me."
We are the people.
And there's more of us than there are of them dammit!
