Spain short portfolio

4347 days ago

The Pain in Spain falls mainly on ....er the Germans and French

Yes I love My Fair Lady. A wonderful film and I remember seeing a stage version with Tony Britton and Liz Robertson which was pretty stunning. But this is about PIIGS not Pygmalion. A while back the leaders of the Evil Empire told us that Greece, Eire and Portugal would be bailed out of “local difficulties” and that a line in the sand had been drawn under the Euro crisis. At the time some of us suggested this was a big fat Euro lie and it has not taken long for we sceptics to be vindicated.

In the 3 lead PIIGS the people are rebelling against austerity measures. Let’s see if Greece stays in the Euro and avoids default. I cannot see why or how it can stay inside the single currency but only time will tell. Meanwhile austerity measures implemented elsewhere (Spain) as a result of EU diktat have pushed Spain ( and others) into a mega recession which now shows just how flaky are the balance sheets of most of its banks ( something we sceptics also called correctly a while back). And so the EU ( via the European Financial Stability Facililty – EFSF) is to hand over £80 billion to Spain to allow it to bail out its banks.

---