By Paul Solman, "The Rundown" @ PBS News Hour, June 8, 2012
Interview with Jose Antonio Martinez Soler, asked to "update us on the reign of pain." Excerpts:
What is happening in Spain (I told you so) is much worse than what I thought a few years ago after the double crises: the financial one of the subprime mortgages, Lehman Brothers, etc. (which attacked almost all countries) and the implosion of the real estate bubble (which attacked Spain above all) [....]
Now we have the same percentage of unemployed as in 1984 and, in addition, hundreds of thousands of empty houses and apartments [....] But there are also rural property lots -- toxic assets deceitfully and illegally valued as urban in the balances of banks and savings banks- that have carried almost half of the Spanish financial system to bankruptcy. Rural land with a value of x went into bank balances as a value of 100x [....]
In good times, the blanket of economic expansion usually hides vices and inefficiencies. The crisis pulls away the blanket and our disgraces are exposed: public wastefulness, nepotism, underground economy, corruption, welfare abuses, enormous tax evasion, injustices, impunity of white glove delinquency, etc.
In these troubled times, I perceive a huge disrespect for the political class - few young people consider working in politics as something honorable. And what I call the Index of Surrounding Corruption (ISC) has become now unbearable [....]