The unions in Spain organised a general strike today on the 100th day of Partido Polpular Marioano Rajoy’s day in office. Spain is in a depression with unemployment over 20%, youth unemployment over 50% and GDP expected to drop a further 2% this year alone. Spanish bond yields are rising and stock prices are falling on the back of this. Citigroup Chief Economist Willem Buiter has recently written a piece that outlines his view that Spain will need to seek a bailout at some point this year.
I don’t have a lot to add to the picture I gave you the other day of what is happening in Spain but because this is a day of the general strike, a large number of the links below are about Spain and the situation there, in both English and Spanish.
That’s it. Here are the links.
These figures pan out to about $10 per Android handset, or roughly $135 million, each year.
Los graves disturbios de la capital catalana empañan un día con escasos incidentes en el resto de España
While Hyman Minsky and Friedrich Hayek are often thought to be polar extremes of economic thought, Minsky and Hayek aren’t really as far apart as most people think.
House Republicans threw their support behind Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan on Thursday, ramping up an election-year clash with Democrats over Medicare and federal spending.
El banco estadounidense estima que habrá un estancamiento en 2013, aunque contempla también escenarios más desalentadores
Cristóbal Montoro anuncia en el Congreso que el próximo martes se convocará la ponencia y, tras la Semana Santa, el proyecto se debatirá en Comisión y volverá al Pleno del Congreso
The Pentagon said on Thursday it would expect hundreds of thousands of layoffs across the defense industry if lawmakers did not take action to avert an additional $500 billion in defense budget cuts that could take effect in January 2013.
A Moroccan worker in Italy set himself on fire on Thursday in protest at not being paid for months, a day after an Italian businessman set himself alight over a tax dispute, police said.
Leaked draft statement ahead of Copenhagen meeting says ESM to be capped at €700bn and fall back to €500bn
"There are very sophisticated parties out there. But there are also smaller players who basically have no idea what they’re doing. Some small savings bank perhaps, or some municipality. What got to me after a while is how I’d be lying in the faces of these less sophisticated parties. And I’d be thinking, wow, this is my parents’ pension money down the drain. Some guy working for a small bank in Belgium would be called ‘muppet’, that’s very likely." The former salesman concurred: "It’s an open secret that there is this group of less sophisticated institutional investors, mainly from southern Europe, who would buy things they didn’t understand."
According to the New York Post the book by former Goldman banker Greg Smith has attracted a bidding war that could land the former banker a million dollar advance
Tracy Martin, describing the police version of events in a meeting Wednesday with Washington Post reporters and editors, said he did not believe the official account, which was conveyed to him two days after his 17-year-old son was killed Feb. 26. The detective’s explanation, as relayed by Martin, largely coincides with recent news reports that George Zimmerman told investigators that he shot Trayvon Martin in self-defense.
New claims for unemployment benefits fell to a fresh four-year low last week, according to a government report that showed ongoing healing in the labor market.
Over the January to March period, economic output fell compared to the previous quarter, at an annual rate of -0.4pc, the Paris-based think-tank believes. That would imply quarter-on-quarter growth of -0.1pc.
"He started shouting about how they got us in Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan, and that they’re going to take us down," Antolino said. "When he started saying the Lord’s Prayer, we tackled him to the ground and restrained him." Until the pilot left the cockpit and spent about 15 minutes in the cabin, there were no clues for passengers that anything was amiss
Le photographe Helmut Newton (1920-2004), dont la première rétrospective française est présentée au Grand Palais, est surtout connu pour ses photos de mode provocantes, reflets d’un monde où l’argent et le sexe s’affichent sans complexe. Mais Helmut Newton était aussi un portraitiste talentueux, fasciné par la célébrité, par ceux qu’il appelait "the famous and the infamous". Il disait : "J’aime photographier les gens que j’aime, les gens que j’admire, les gens célèbres, et surtout les tristement célèbres." Nous avons demandé à trois de ses modèles de raconter leur séance de pose.
one thing that is it important to understand is that all the documents pertaining to a specific mortgage (the note, the mortgage, which is the lien on the property, title insurance, etc) go in a single file called a collateral file. It is supposed to be with the trustee or a custodian hired by the trustee, unless it has been sent out for a specific purpose. The documents in a collateral file are put in in a particular order (generally chronological) and are supposed to remain in that order. Notice also that Szymoniak’s argument about mishandling or worse of her files rests on extensive photographic evidence. Borrowers fighting banks take note. This is the sort of thing the mortgage settlement is trying to cover up. But nothing in the settlement addressed the underlying failure to convey the notes properly to securitization trusts
I get two to three times as much writing accomplished when I focus without interruption for a designated period of time and then take a real break, away from my desk. The best way for an organization to fuel higher productivity and more innovative thinking is to strongly encourage finite periods of absorbed focus, as well as shorter periods of real renewal.
Half the electorate plans to vote for radical opposition groups, ranging from Soviet-style Communists to anti-immigrant neo-Nazis, according to recent opinion polls. That could lead to growing political instability even if the established parties cling to power, undermining Greece’s ability to enact the drastic spending cuts and economic overhauls its creditors demanded.
It might surprise readers to learn that economists are still debating whether low interest ratesin countries like Ireland and Spain were responsible for their housing bubbles. A new paper by Christian Hott and Terhi Jokipii at VoxEU looked at housing prices in 14 OECD countries from 1985 onward to assess the impact of protracted periods of low short term interest rates. Their conclusion was that they explained up to 50% of housing overvaluation in bubble-afflicted markets.