Economic crisis: riots, food raids, and the collapse of Spain

August 25, 2012 – SPAIN – In the small Spanish town of Marinaleda, located in the southern region of Andalusía, Mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo has an answer for the country’s economic crisis and the hunger that comes with it: He organized and led the town’s residents to raid supermarkets to get the food necessary to survive. Seven people have been arrested in two raids in which trade unionists loaded shopping carts full of food and left without paying, with the support of the townspeople cheering them on and the mayor watching with approval. (reuters.com, Aug. 15) Gordillo, 60, is a leftist and a member of the Izquierda Unida political party. He sports a Palestinian kaffiyeh scarf around his neck and a Fidel Castro-like beard. Gordilla says he wants to draw attention to the plight of the common worker in Spain, a country in which the economic collapse has hit particularly hard and millions are suffering. (europeonline-magazine.eu, Aug. 14) Since 2007, poverty in Spain has risen 15 percent, while unemployment hovers around 25 percent and tens of thousands have lost their homes to bank foreclosures. The conservative national government has only made matters worse, by introducing austerity measures that have worsened the workers’ lives, while bailing out the bankers and capitalists who caused the crisis in the first place. Gordillo plans to lead a march from Jódar, one of the cities most affected by the current economic meltdown, to other Spanish towns, to try to convince other officials to fight back against the ruling class’s demands of cutbacks and increased hardship for the workers. He is fighting dismantlement of state social services, bank payoffs, and the throwing of the common Spaniard under the bus to the benefit of those exploiting them. Gordillo hopes he can convince other mayors to stage a real resistance to the government’s demands. –Workers World

Spain and the Mayan calendar: According to Eugene Olkhovsky, Masterforex-V Academy’s leading expert, analysts and economist are divided over the destiny of the eurozone. In particular, Mario Draghi, President of the CB says he sees light at the end of the tunnel of the eurozone crisis. At the same time, Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, warns that quantitative easing won’t help the eurozone to solve its financial problems, this is a temporary solution but it won’t help the currency union to resolve the fundamental problems that have caused the crisis. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the Euro Group, confirmed the info that the EU and the ECB are getting ready for a joint intervention in the currency market. Meanwhile, the central banks of eurozone members are now studying the chances of carrying extra losses if the Greek debt is liquidated. Jim O’Neill, Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, assumes that Spain may become the locomotive of a eurozone collapse. The IMF called for creating a financial and banking union within the eurozone, thus saying that the crisis has reached its climax. The coalition government of Greece strives to receive a bridge loan in order to settle the budget deficit issue and to cut the public spending by 11.7 bn euro in order to calm down international lenders. According to Roboforex, the ECB will work out a mechanism for a direct intervention in the market of bonds. More and more experts start saying that the financial “end of the world” is near. According to Masterforex-V Academy, the current stereotype is that the bearish direction is the major one for all markets, especially for stock markets. However, December 2012 may well become some kind of a “pivot point” when the stereotype will be broken. In this case, traders and investors will have to reconsider their approach towards capital markets as the conventional ways of analyzing and trading those markets will most likely become inefficient. The SRP Department of Masterforex-V Academy, managed to calculate that the time of the probable financial apocalypse, which (if any) will match the popular doomsday scenario for late December 2012. –Market Leader