Edward Hugh speaks to PBS about Spain’s underground economy

By Edward Harrison On Jul 24, 2010

PBS’ Paul Solman takes another look at Spain’s economic woes, which include a 20 percent unemployment rate. In the Web extra above, he talks to British economist Edward Hugh, a long-time resident of Barcelona, about Span’s underground economy.

Edward Harrison 7783 posts 575 comments

Edward Harrison is a senior Editor at Bloomberg. He is also the founder of Credit Writedowns newsletter, a former career diplomat, investment banker and technology executive with over twenty five years of business experience. He speaks six languages and reads another five, skills he uses to provide a more global perspective. Edward holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College.

The Poisoning and other links

PBS: Scientist Shows How Corexit, Bacteria Disperse Oil

5 Comments

Guest says 14 years ago

Edward Hugh clearly doesn’t live in the real world. In Spain the ‘black economy’ IS because of the taxes being high and not because those cultures ‘like to cheat’. Some many but on the whole it is because social taxes for Autonomos and PYMES (self-employed and small to medium sized businesses) and that IVA (Valued added tax) was paid up front causing severe cash flow problems to many.

The other part of it is because Unions and socialist governments have left such an inflexible labour market that if you are unemployed your dole could easily run out whilst you are looking for work which leaves many with no option but to work in the black or see you and your family starve.

Even, during a recent interview on Canal 9 by the head of the Valencian Autonomos association made this very clear. The fault is high taxes, unions and socialism and not the small businesses and self-employed.

This report is another case of an economist being too far removed from the real picture to have a valid comment to make.

Comments are closed.