Extra: The Berlin Boys' Neoliberal Diktats are Crushing Spain!

The New York Times reports on the disaster that is overtaking Spain:

[Eating garbage is] becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.

Not to worry, though -- the Spanish government is coming to the rescue with even more austerity:

Recession-hit Spaniards will this week be told to swallow yet more austerity as the government prepares a fresh round of reforms and another budget filled with spending cuts and tax increases that will allow it to seek a bailout from eurozone partners.

Pension freezes are also expected to form part of a raft measures to prepare the way for the European Central Bank (ECB) to give Spain support to control borrowing costs that will eat up a large chunk of next year's budget.

The budget is to be announced on Thursday, alongside the reform programme. Neither seemed likely to contain measures to immediately ease Spain's chronic 25% unemployment, which some analysts expect will rise to 26.5% next year.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If it were the United States or the IMF or the World Bank imposing these policies on Spain, the German press would be aflame with proudly one-sided articles like this one (g) from 1983 (the neoliberal policies imposed by the 'Chicago Boys' on Chile have led to ruin and misery) or this one (g) from 2009 (the IMF and World Bank are forcing policy changes on developing countries by means of debt and poverty) and we'd see websites like this one (g) (advocating debt forgiveness for developing nations).

When international institutions impose those dreaded 'neoliberal' policies, the mainstream German press knows just who is to blame, and righteously thumps the tub, writing articles that read like attac press releases. When Germany does the same thing, the issue suddenly appears in fifty shades of grey, so to speak, and we are reminded that the nations affected have been 'living beyond their means' and that there is 'no alternative' but for them to get their house in order, no matter how painful that might be.

An instructive contrast!

Comments

[Rebecca]

Really, Cuneiform? The people eating out of garbage bins in Spain are happy, I'm sure, to know that the entrepreneurial spirit will live. Try living in a country with 25% unemployment (and 50% youth unemployment) and make a remark like that with a straight face. In the US, at the height of the Great Depression, unemployment was also at 25% - people in the US certainly did not feel that "all chances and all options" were open!

[Jen Bonson]

Just quit Spiegel and your life will improve on all levels. It simply unnecessay to pay attention to the German media. Whatever you can read in foreign quality media about Germany is better for developing a true understanding.
I think it has come to a situation where Springer journalists have a better journalistic ethos, on average, than Spiegel journalists.

[Cuneiform]

An instructive contrast!
Yes, but... the situation is different between the European states and developing/third world nations. In the latter case undemocratic and illiberal governments force their measures on the people. The people have little chance of escaping poverty due to the political system.

In the more or less liberal democracies of Europe cutting back government spending still leaves people with all chances and all options: Some people who fail to adapt will suffer but the entrepreneurial spirits will thrive.

[xxx]

Dear Andrew, you accuse the German society of hypocrisy, and rightly so. On the other hand you should know fairly well why some of the media are so reluctant to blame the Spanish state. Chile was not and Spain is not master of it's own destiny like the USA is. Neither is any other country in the Euro-zone. The Spiegel article may be hypocritical in places, but on the whole it's almost prophetic.

"Zurück blieben eine ruinierte Volkswirtschaft, für deren Erholung Fachleute mindestens 20 Jahre veranschlagen, sowie ein sozialer und politischer Vulkan, der von der bewaffneten Macht nur noch mit Gewalt unter Kontrolle gehalten wird und jeden Augenblick explodieren könnte. Denn die Billigeinfuhren haben die heimische Industrie nicht wettbewerbsfähig gemacht, wie von den Chicago Boys erwartet, sondern sie ruiniert."

So, wasn't this playing out almost exactly like it is doing now in Greece etc.?

Chile may have recovered somewhat because of the very high price of copper these days, but the inequality has stuck, and Greece on the other hand has no resources like copper at all.

The USA, Europe and other 'developed states' are plundered by their 'elites', and some nations break down sooner, some later. This is not the shocking news it used to be, it's commonplace now - all over the world.

Still, a lot of other papers like 'Die Zeit' do bring articles about the breakdown of civil societies there and here, you also need to read some other german blogs like 'Telepolis'.

This is financial capitalism going rampant, everywhere, and nobody knows exactly what to do.