# You shouldn't have to lessons of Cyprus in Spain



## expatmat (Feb 12, 2013)

https://www.internationalman.com/78...ave-to-relearn-the-lessons-of-cyprus-in-spain

Watch out for the surprise bank holiday!


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

There you go again, Mat! I think you must like spreading alarm and despondency.
Can you put some kind of time scale on this?
Next Friday? Next Christmas? Next year?
This is a report, one of many such, from some guy's blog. Not much of substance in it, really.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

expatmat said:


> https://www.internationalman.com/78...ave-to-relearn-the-lessons-of-cyprus-in-spain
> 
> Watch out for the surprise bank holiday!


Watch out for bloggers who don't know the difference between insolvency and bankruptcy!


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Chopera said:


> Watch out for bloggers who don't know the difference between insolvency and bankruptcy!


Indeed! Or between insolvency and illiquidity....


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

or can't spell "devaluing" without devaluing the language and making it into "devaluating" 

I hate Americans who try to pretend to be clever and well educated by baffling the rest of us with made-up words and reinventing the meanings of perfectly ordinary common-or-garden words. Almost as bad are those who tart things up into sounding more important than they really are, such as my _suegra_ who will insist on calling the hairdresser's shop opposite the house to which she goes, a "beauty parlor" (her spelling). Dammit they don't even do a manicure, it's just *hair*. I try to get my own back by saying that I'm going to the "gentlemen's grooming emporium". On one occasion she trotted out the 'beauty parlour' I said that they should all go and ask for their money back since they came out as ugly as they went in! She didn't speak to me for a couple of days!


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## doro (Aug 1, 2010)

"This leaves Spain with an ever-growing pile of government debt, which is expected to rise from 84% of GDP in 2012 to nearly 111% in 2018. This is the worst gross debt/GDP outlook for any advanced economy.

In short, Spain has the fastest rising debt level of any developed country and no realistic options to stop it."

This is correct.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

doro said:


> "This leaves Spain with an ever-growing pile of government debt, which is expected to rise from 84% of GDP in 2012 to nearly 111% in 2018. This is the worst gross debt/GDP outlook for any advanced economy.
> 
> In short, Spain has the fastest rising debt level of any developed country and no realistic options to stop it."
> 
> This is correct.


That may well be so. But to make a giant leap from that fact to the unsupported supposition that the Spanish Government will attempt an asset grab on all its residents - and we seem to ignore the Spanish people when we discuss these issues - is scare-mongering, although most level-headed people will take no notice and carry on with their lives.

You can trawl the net and find a million and one conflicting interpretations and predictions as to the current economic situation and its likely outcome. As I said on another thread, economics is a pseudo-science. It cannot predict, it can only identify trends and speculate.

The theories of one particular economic leaning got us into this mess. The economic forecasters at the ratings agency added their help.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

mrypg9 said:


> That may well be so. But to make a giant leap from that fact to the unsupported supposition that the Spanish Government will attempt an asset grab on all its residents - and we seem to ignore the Spanish people when we discuss these issues - is scare-mongering, although most level-headed people will take no notice and carry on with their lives.
> 
> You can trawl the net and find a million and one conflicting interpretations and predictions as to the current economic situation and its likely outcome. As I said on another thread, *economics is a pseudo-science*. It cannot predict, it can only identify trends and speculate.
> 
> The theories of one particular economic leaning got us into this mess. The economic forecasters at the ratings agency added their help.


Yes science requires some element of falibility, so you can test whether a theory is right, wrong, needs to be modified, etc. Economics doesn't have that element, which is why economic theory never really moves on. QE is a classic example - it's an experiment in monetary policy - but we'll still be arguing the toss about what effect QE has had until the cows come home.


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## Brangus (May 1, 2010)

baldilocks said:


> or can't spell "devaluing" without devaluing the language and making it into "devaluating"
> 
> I hate Americans who try to pretend to be clever and well educated by baffling the rest of us with made-up words and reinventing the meanings of perfectly ordinary common-or-garden words.


"Devaluate" (1898) was in use before "devalue" (WWI era).


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Brangus said:


> "Devaluate" (1898) was in use before "devalue" (WWI era).


But where?


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## Calas felices (Nov 29, 2007)

You don't have to guess - the information is in the Random House Dictionary - part of Websters. Unfortunately when we sent the Americas some of our best people we forget to educate them first..


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Calas felices said:


> You don't have to guess - the information is in the Random House Dictionary - part of Websters. Unfortunately when we sent the Americas some of our best people we forget to educate them first..


and Noah Webster was one of them.. He had great difficulty in spelling so he volunteered to produce a new dictionary for the emerging United States, his reasoning being that if he produced the dictionary using his spelling, then everybody would follow his spelling rather than his trying to follow the existing. BUT he was inconsistent and didn't understand that in some cases the spelling tells you how to pronounce the word and distinguish between one word and another. He claimed that the context tells you what the word means so you don't need to have double letters - he would fall down on "The [telephone] conversation was being taped/tapped" for example.


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## Brangus (May 1, 2010)

Calas felices said:


> Unfortunately when we sent the Americas some of our best people we forget to educate them first..


"Me and my partner" wonder if you are continuing the pattern in Spain.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Brangus said:


> "Me and my partner" wonder if you are continuing the pattern in Spain.


I've often wondered that myself...

Now if I recall correctly, we sent Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, to name but two of the very many rightly celebrated emigres....

Perhaps if we had kept them in the UK we might have had democratic government a couple of centuries earlier...


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