Global Economic Crisis

The unemployment rate in the Eurozone’s  4th largest economy continues to soar, and has now reached 27.2 percent. After 5 years of unrelenting economic crisis, Spain’s deep depression shows no sign of ending. The IMF projects further contraction in the Spanish economy for 2013, with the unemployment rate expected to continue to rise.

The beleaguered Spanish Prime Minister,  Mariano Rajoy, has nothing to offer the six million plus unemployed Spaniards, except for more austerity measures, masquerading as “economic reforms.”  With the worst jobs crisis since the end of the Franco dictatorship, the political leadership in Spain is impotent, and unrest among the unemployed and disaffected is increasing, with calls for mass demonstrations opposing Madrid’s economic policies proliferating on social media.

With Spain’s economy in tatters, can democracy survive, or will the economic crisis  lead to calls for a “strong man” to rescue the millions of unemployed from the utter hopelessness now raging on the Iberian peninsula?

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The Spanish banking giant, Bankia, has a balance sheet  full of toxic real estate assets, all hemorrhaging red ink. To survive, and prevent a further erosion in Spain’s crisis torn banking sector, Bankia needs a bailout from Spain’s already beleaguered taxpayers. But with Spain itself a sovereign debt risk, with an economy in recession and catastrophic levels of unemployment, there is increasing talk in the Eurozone that the bullet needs to be bitten if the euro will be saved. In other words, a bailout for the entire Spanish economy.

A bailout of Spain would be a far bigger problem than Greece, Ireland or Portugal. It would ultimately mean that the German taxpayers will have to bailout Madrid. The talk is now of Eurobonds, a formulation that in theory holds all the Eurozone members as being collateral for debt risk. This would compel the unwilling Germans to be the lender of last resort-through the backdoor of a Eurobond- if Spain is to be bailed out of its fiscal woes.

So this is what the European monetary union has come to; forcing the German taxpayer- democracy be dammed-to pay for all the catastrophic mistakes made by the Eurozone politicians. And this is supposed to end the Global Economic Crisis? I rather doubt it.

Spain’s central bank, The Bank of Spain, has officially stated that for the second time since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, Madrid’s economy is in recession. The news that the Spanish economy has entered a double-dip recession is no surprise for the Spanish people, currently experiencing the misery of an official unemployment rate of 20 percent.

In the words of the Bank of Spain, “The most recent information for the start of 2012 confirms the prolongation of the contraction in output.” This all happens as the Spanish government reins in spending, with a current deficit to GDP ratio of 8.5 percent. With the fiscal drag imposed by a retrenchment in government spending, there will be no Keynesian solution to Spain’s current recession. Furthermore, Spain is not alone; other vulnerable Eurozone economies are in recession-or about to double dip into one. The economists keep telling us that economic growth is the only solution to the Eurozone’s debt crisis. With many of its struggling economies in negative or stagnant growth, it is hard to see a solution to the Eurozone’s debt crisis, other than bank-destroying sovereign defaults and inflation-creating loose monetary policies by the European Central Bank.

The decision by Fitch, one  of the three leading ratings agencies, to downgrade Spain’s government debt to below AAA status is another manifestation of the deadly sovereign debt contagion that has becoming increasingly virulent since Greece’s public finances imploded. What was once a Greek debt crisis that Eurozone politicians were confident could be contained has now contaminated the entire fiscal edifice of the European Union.

As a further  sign of the deteriorating economic and financial situation in Spain, a growing number of Spanish banks are facing insolvency. There is an attempt by the government and central bank to arrange a shotgun marriage that will consolidate dozens of regional banks that are in fragile condition. This comes on the heels of a major austerity package  enacted by the Spanish government headed by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which was approved by the national parliament by a single vote. This illustrates the fragility of the Zapatero government, at a times when further economic and financial shocks are likely, on top of a labor revolt against the austerity measures, similar to what is occurring in Greece.

The worsening news emerging from Greece, Portugal and now Spain are mere markers on a path leading to a profound sovereign debt crisis that will afflict not only the Eurozone and UK economies, but eventually Japan and the United States.