# SPAIN´S BANK BAILOUT - Sometimes a little goes an awfully long way



## Dave Bull (Jul 12, 2011)

It´s not often I get serious...as you´ve no doubt noticed but I needed to get something off my chest (fortunately not the Labrador, again), so here goes.
You see I live in a fantastic country that has welcomed me with open arms and given me a living (and dented my car a few times but I’m being serious...remember?) so I hate to knock it. But nowhere is perfect...
On the subject of the huge amount of unemployed youngsters that we have here why can´t the government see (& I’m not into party politics by the way) that if they helped the small businesses with as much vigour and haste as they bail the banks out (and at about a tenth of the cost) they would, in the long run, bring more money into the chancellery?
Maggie Thatcher (like Marmite I know...) did it during the recession at the end of the 80´s and gave the little guys as much help as possible (I know she wasn´t perfect - but this policy was a belter) and kick-started the economy by helping to establish thousands and thousands of small businesses that consequently employed hundreds of thousands of people - because it was made affordable.
By the end of the 90´s more small businesses existed in the UK (pro-rata) than anywhere else in the world. Even now entrepreneurs are encouraged as much as possible in the UK - and highlighted on shows such as the Apprentice and Dragon´s Den around the world.
After today´s events I’ve almost (almost) given up hope of gaining the support of the very country that could do with (a lot) more taxes helping to pay off the EU but can´t see it - much better I cough up 254€ each month in ´autonomo´ (before I’ve earned a penny by the way) than find a way to help small businesses take people off the ´paro´ and INTO contributing to the state´s coffers.
Maybe I’m being simplistic (and if I am Señor Rajoy please contact me here) but it doesn´t take much more than a calculator shaped like a carrot (it was all I had) to discover that you could get around 50,000 young people back in work AND paying back in to the system rather than taking out of the pot.
Just last week Bankia, Spain’s fourth largest bank, asked the Spanish government for a bail out of 19€ billion. That´s a lot of money no? And possibly almost a million off the dole queue...
I was offered (I use ´offered´ in its loosest term - as I had to beg) 5,000€ to employ a female over 30 years old who was currently claiming the Spanish dole. Great. But I had to give her a 2 year fixed contract and wait (and pay her of course) at least ten months for the grant. In other words as long as you´ve got cash, they´ll happily help. But as any small business knows, the essential ingredient that is the blood in the veins of trading is cash flow. And all the while the banks (who hold on to the hand-outs they are given rather than loan out to people looking to grow their businesses - I haven´t been turned down even if it sounds like it) can have it but the little guy can´t, Spain will struggle to move (relatively quickly) out of recession. Load Of Bull


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Dave Bull said:


> It´s not often I get serious...as you´ve no doubt noticed but I needed to get something off my chest (fortunately not the Labrador, again), so here goes.
> You see I live in a fantastic country that has welcomed me with open arms and given me a living (and dented my car a few times but I’m being serious...remember?) so I hate to knock it. But nowhere is perfect...
> On the subject of the huge amount of unemployed youngsters that we have here why can´t the government see (& I’m not into party politics by the way) that if they helped the small businesses with as much vigour and haste as they bail the banks out (and at about a tenth of the cost) they would, in the long run, bring more money into the chancellery?
> Maggie Thatcher (like Marmite I know...) did it during the recession at the end of the 80´s and gave the little guys as much help as possible (I know she wasn´t perfect - but this policy was a belter) and kick-started the economy by helping to establish thousands and thousands of small businesses that consequently employed hundreds of thousands of people - because it was made affordable.
> ...


I'm all for helping SMEs/PYMEs... we had businesses in the UK so I agree with 99.9% of what you say.
But I can't agree about Mrs.Thatcher's support for small business. Many of those businesses were short-lived -me, my dad and our lorry seemed the typical Thatcher start-up which lasted about as long as the fuel in the lorry tank.
Mrs. Thatcher came to office vowing to take the state off people's backs: when she left office public spending was higher than when she first became PM and more people than ever relied on the state in the form of welfare benefits.
There was also the not insignificant factor that the Thatcher 'boom' was just as consumer credit-fuelled as the failed construction bubble in Spain.
The main problem for any SME in the UK is and always will be the availability of credit.
Credit for business, unlike consumer credit, is essential for expansion, job creation and increased tax revenue for the Exchequer.
The scarcity of skilled labour is another factor hindering economic progress in the UK - probavbly in Spain too. Our businesses relied on highly trained and qualified technicians who because of their scarcity could if they wished hold us to ransom. They didn't because we paid the best wages in the area! But where can business start-ups get affordable credit in Spain? Are there any apprenticeship equivalents or other vehick=les for supplying sl=killed tradespeople and technicians?
It seems that at times of economic crisis, those in power look through the wrong end of the telescope. As you pointed out in another post, small-scale local activity does as much if not more for the economy than ambitious large-scale projects - although it shouldn't be forgotten that these infrastructure projects have spin-off value in the work given to small companies.
As it seems likely that we are entering a prolonged period of low or no growth, hopefully there will be more focus on the small-scale and local.
But frankly, I doubt it.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Dave Bull said:


> It´s not often I get serious...as you´ve no doubt noticed but I needed to get something off my chest (fortunately not the Labrador, again), so here goes.
> You see I live in a fantastic country that has welcomed me with open arms and given me a living (and dented my car a few times but I’m being serious...remember?) so I hate to knock it. But nowhere is perfect...
> On the subject of the huge amount of unemployed youngsters that we have here why can´t the government see (& I’m not into party politics by the way) that if they helped the small businesses with as much vigour and haste as they bail the banks out (and at about a tenth of the cost) they would, in the long run, bring more money into the chancellery?
> Maggie Thatcher (like Marmite I know...) did it during the recession at the end of the 80´s and gave the little guys as much help as possible (I know she wasn´t perfect - but this policy was a belter) and kick-started the economy by helping to establish thousands and thousands of small businesses that consequently employed hundreds of thousands of people - because it was made affordable.
> ...


I don't know much about economy and finance, but I do know that if you only make cuts and don't make investments your country's not creating employment and employment is a country's oxygen.
I think it's getting pretty stuffy in Spain and somebody needs to open the window and let some AIR IN!!


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## nigele2 (Dec 25, 2009)

Dave great post. My company started on Maggies watch and like her or hate her (as you say) we have created jobs (in a very small way ), kept ourselves employed and even exported our talents. Not bad for two guys who in the first 15 years preferred the golf course to the office 

We had thought of doing business in Spain but it's simply impossible for us. When I had previously worked in Spain for a US company the only real business I did was with the Bank of Spain which involved as far as I could see  breaking the law (1987 so it's nothing new in Spain), and with the Germans who ran SEAT  

But to your question: do you not think that the reason is that the ruling parties (and I don't just mean the PP and PSOE) are so deep in criminality that their first priority is keeping themselves above water? Money for the banks is money for them.

In Asturias we now see scenes you expect in Libya and Syria. And this is in part because EU money intended to create new jobs for miners has strangely disappeared!! Surely it must end soon! But I've been thinking that for 10 years 

But enjoyed your post; do come again


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## jimenato (Nov 21, 2009)

You're wasting your time saying anything nice about MT around here Dave - all of this is her fault.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

jimenato said:


> You're wasting your time saying anything nice about MT around here Dave - all of this is her fault.



His comments about MT were neutral, though. It's true, some start-ups prospered during the Thatcher years....but many more folded after a couple of years.
And the figures about increased public spending and welfare claimants speak for themselves, whatever your views on Thatcher may be. And if I'm honest I have to say that the comparative prosperity that enabled us to retire early and end up in Spain started in the Thatcher years.

What is beyond dispute is that her embrace of an intellectually dubious Austrian economic philosophy laid the seeds for the evil growth we now have, a growth that has choked nearly all the economies whose governments took up neo-liberal economic policies.

No way can you claim that the sweeping deregulation that accompanied the Big Bang hasn't played a major role in the current financial crisis.

You know that I'm no advocate of socialist policies, far from it. What I want to see is an economy where private enterprise whether big or small-scale flourishes but within a framework of workers' rights, fair wages at top and bottom of the workforce and a taxation system that simultaneously rewards enterprise but contributes to the infrastructure and social wage that enables business to function and society to flourish.

Is that too much to ask in a world where we can trace a criminal from a droppped cigarette end via DNA, send probes into space and transplant human organs?

Or does it substantiate my view that our moral, political and spiritual progress has failed to march in lock-step with our scientific and technological achievements?


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

jimenato said:


> You're wasting your time saying anything nice about MT around here Dave - all of this is her fault.


Aw come on, she has more supporters on this forum than opponents. It's just that her opponents are more eloquent!


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## 90199 (Mar 21, 2010)

Having to pay 254 Euros a month to start your own business is absolutely potty.

When I started my own business in England and my National Insurance contributions were reduced to £2 a week. I was in business for about ten years and quite successful.


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## jojo (Sep 20, 2007)

Alcalaina said:


> Aw come on, she has more supporters on this forum than opponents. It's just that her opponents are more eloquent!


I liked her, so did my family!

Jo xxx


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## Solwriter (Jan 10, 2012)

Actually I don't (or never did) hate MT (although I did find her incredibly annoying...).
I think that hating a political figure often takes our focus away from the system itself which can and does provide hateful consequences.

I was at a SWP meeting (yeah, I Know...) when MT was finally ousted, and people were celebrating.
But for me, celebrations were not in order. The Tories were still in power, policies put through during the Thatcher years were still in force (and, as it turned out, many were kept even by the Blair government) and nothing had really changed, except for a change of focal point to a more amenable one - a person who was actually hard to hate...
And I was proved right, when the Conservatives won the next election.

But... :focus:


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## Solwriter (Jan 10, 2012)

nigele2 said:


> But to your question: do you not think that the reason is that the ruling parties (and I don't just mean the PP and PSOE) are so deep in criminality that their first priority is keeping themselves above water? Money for the banks is money for them.


I'm not Dave (obviously ), but I think it is now as much a case of covering their tracks as lining their pockets.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Solwriter said:


> Actually I don't (or never did) hate MT (although I did find her incredibly annoying...).
> I think that hating a political figure often takes our focus away from the system itself which can and does provide hateful consequences.
> 
> I was at a SWP meeting (yeah, I Know...) when MT was finally ousted, and people were celebrating.
> ...


I didn't and don't 'hate' MT. I never met her and got to know her so how could I hate - or for that matter like - her
I thought at the time and think now that her politics were all wrong. She was an ideologue and we Brits don't do ideologies. That's why we have never had 'socialism' and never will and why people turned against MT when they finally realised she had a 'theory'.
British people are instinctively conservative. Our philosophy of politics is a pragmatic, organic one that shrinks from radicalism. Far-right ideologies are placebos for the comparatively poor, far-left ideologies make better-off people with guilt complexes feel righteous....but neither will make much headway against our innate 'If it ain't broke why fix it' mentality.
We can be grateful for this in many ways. No civil war for four hundred years, no revolution, peaceful change through the ballot-box, very little blood on the streets..
But the problem arises when as now we need to stir ourselves to force a radical change and undo the damage that the swivel-eyed ideologues have committed.
Imo people know they were fooled and have lost trust.
MT's real crime was to destroy conservatism. Slow, steady incremental progress had no place in her ideology. 
Just as it is for the Trots, creative destruction is the credo of neo-liberalism.
Look where it's got us.


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## Solwriter (Jan 10, 2012)

mrypg9 said:


> I didn't and don't 'hate' MT. I never met her and got to know her so how could I hate - or for that matter like - her


I never said you did. 
I was responding to the love her or hate her' comments.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Solwriter said:


> I never said you did.
> I was responding to the love her or hate her' comments.



I know.  Just saying what I think about her.


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## Muddy (Jan 14, 2010)

Some light entertainment (as it is Friday after all) but with their usual cutting remarks on recent events...
It's worth a watch for a laugh and for the serious stuff also!


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