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Is Spain now cooking its books?

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Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#11

Post by RickHull »

bobds wrote: post #6
GreenNight wrote: post #5

I have not understood most of it (economics is not my strength and I've got a cold or a flu that gives me a headache) so I'll have to ask. Could the divergence (or some of it) be explained by the off the books economy that is quite strong here in Spain? There's plenty of stories of people being "unemployed" but having a job, and employed people with other ways to increase their capital (off-the-books renting, hidden…

The off-the-books economy of Spain, Italy and Greece is amazingly large in both the private and goverment sectors. Your really have to live there to appreciate its size.

It seems to me that economies, like information, want to be free. Or that like the internet, they route around damage.

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#12

Post by kiba »

bobds wrote: post #6
GreenNight wrote: post #5

I have not understood most of it (economics is not my strength and I've got a cold or a flu that gives me a headache) so I'll have to ask. Could the divergence (or some of it) be explained by the off the books economy that is quite strong here in Spain? There's plenty of stories of people being "unemployed" but having a job, and employed people with other ways to increase their capital (off-the-books renting, hidden…

The off-the-books economy of Spain, Italy and Greece is amazingly large in both the private and goverment sectors. Your really have to live there to appreciate its size.

I thought that the economy of Spain and Greece can't collapse without ravaging its unofficial economy.

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#13

Post by kqr2 »

It looks like the original blog posting has been changed. The tldr summary:

An anonymous blogger is claiming that Spain's GDP for 2008 and 2009 actually declined 17.3% in the most favorable scenario versus the reported data of 3.1%.

Actual report from anonymous blogger:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/Spanish_GDP_rep...

Commentary from zerohedge:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/anonymous-blogger-speculate...

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#14

Post by rogersm »

carlos wrote: post #8
rogersm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaniard here (full disclaimer). @carlos reasoning seems to be supported by the fact Spain's productivity is going up after all the low skilled workers in construction were sacked. Some of the comments of the FT are highly interesting.

I agree some of the comments in FT are very interesting. I'm not saying that productivity is going up, it's in fact going down, as the article says -3.1 variation GDP 2008-2009. But the ratio of unemployment/varGDP is very different to other countries because of the additional unemployment from construction industry, which is the suspicious indicator used by the author. In any case I personally agree with some of the…

I was the one saying that productivity is going up in the last months.

I missed the productivity data in the report (I found only production output) and FT just took out the report from the web.

The question is not that the Spanish government did modify some figures, but if the modifications were in line with countries like Greece or like Germany.

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#15

Post by bobds »

RickHull wrote: post #11
bobds wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The off-the-books economy of Spain, Italy and Greece is amazingly large in both the private and goverment sectors. Your really have to live there to appreciate its size.

It seems to me that economies, like information, want to be free. Or that like the internet, they route around damage.

That's a nice way to put it.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is the way to a more free market.

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#18

Post by gaius »

borism wrote: post #16
bobds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the pattern?

Yeah, what's the pattern? Never heard that Ireland had a large grey economy, yet it seems to me to be the most troubled of the bunch.

Not so much in Dublin perhaps, but rural Ireland is all about favours and bartering, it's not even really a "black market" since cash isn't the currency.

I dunno, it's cool, it makes it feel much more like a connected community, but you can't trade mackerel for fenceposts (this is a real deal in which I was involved) in the global economy without going via actual cash...

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#19

Post by barrkel »

cturner wrote: post #2

How did you get that link to work? Whenever I link to a ft.com link it brings up a request for me to subscribe to something. But your link worked fine.

Not to be beating the same drum I always do when it comes to these things, but if you spoof the "Referer:" header in the request to be http://news.google.com/ or similar, you'll always go straight through to the article on FT. RefControl plugin works well for me in Firefox; other extensions may work well elsewhere.

I'll probably stop mentioning this for a month, but it's just such a convenient hack.

Re: Is Spain now cooking its books?

#20

Post by higher »

bobds wrote: post #15
RickHull wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that economies, like information, want to be free. Or that like the internet, they route around damage.

That's a nice way to put it. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the way to a more free market.

Agorism is a political philosophy dedicated to the idea that free markets (and a more free society) can arise out of a trend toward disregarding governments in commercial matters. It comes with all the typical and commonly rejected anarchist ideas like "any state is inherently unjust and arbitrary," but isn't altogether unreasonable.
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