Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade, according to a clutch of reports over recent days. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6228390/Spain-tips-into-depression.html
Spain was notably worse off in the real estate sense a year or more ago... I guess the pundits of that day were correct..
US is not far behind. So goes cali....so goes the rest of the country. If the US dollar is replaced as a key currency and China does not buy more debt....Say goodbye miss american pie. Citi bank will shed 1000 branches. Terrorist on the move. Sit back and watch the show because "YOU" fucking idiots who voted for OBAMA, the movie just started and the pot that you don't have to piss in...well, you will never have a chance to obtain a pot in the future. CLASS WAR.....Im ready.
My mom and dad just returned from a 5 country tour of Europe with a group of their freinds (6 couples) The last two days were in Barcelona. They were warned multiple times to look out for pick pockets and other hoodlums. Sure enough- My dad and another guy in the group were waiting for a car service with a few pieces of luggage and a couple of small backpacks. Five guys in their late teens or early 20's converged on them. They never physically attacked them, just more like a grab and run quick hitter. Thankfully no one was hurt. The D-bags only grabbed two small backpacks and a shopping bag with trip memorabilia. The shocking thing was, this happened in broad daylight right near their hotel in a nice and busy part of town, and no one seemed to care! The passerby's just went on like it was a normal everyday event! Things must be pretty F'ed up over there.
i do not think one is able to judge a country's economics by the amount of pick pockets, this happend in the time of a healthy economy just as much in the big city's.London is far worse. sorry to hear about the nasty experience.
Oooohhhh. I'm really impressed. Getting back to the topic at hand, Spain is merely the tip of the iceberg. Portugal has been struggling for years, Greece and Italy aren't much better, and the Baltics have been suffering from the effects of currency union as well. In a currency union, interest rates are ever only matched up with the conditions in one of its regions. Mostly, they wind up matched with the region that's already doing the best, so the fact that the union's interest rates have benefited Germany's economy the most is not remotely surprising. Germany joined the euro as the price of being able to reunify with its eastern part. Everyone else joined for the prestige: Spain, Ireland, and the other peripheral countries because the euro offered membership in the "European club", France because it still thinks it can make Paris a financial center to rival London's - DeGaulle foundered on that dream; Sarkozy, his disciple, is still trying to twist and turn into it somehow. The euro is two spent empires, Germany and France, with a bunch of peripheral players trying to cozy up to them. The euro may - just may - survive this crisis intact. The next? No way.
There are always pick pockets and thieves of that kind in Barca and other coastal towns around the med like Nice. Mostly gypsy's or Moroccans, they are a scourge and if you confront them they run or pull knives and then run. In Barca they hang around in the shadows off Las Ramblas in the evening looking for easy prey, often acting as back up for the ubiquitous three card monte scammers (if you confront the 3 card monte guy within seconds 5 or 6 guys will pop out of the alley behind him to back him up). It is slightly comical though for someone in the US to point to European street crime as an indicator of how bad things are getting there. Ever heard of MS 13 over here? Or any other number of gangs that go around armed with uzi's etc. I would feel safe walking around any quarter of Madrid or Barca any time of day or night and have done for years, even Rome is fine if you don't look like a fat pasty tourist ripe for the plucking cowering at every shadow. I can't say the same for Chicago or NewYork where the chance of ending up dead if you are in the wrong place is several multiples higher than pretty much anyplace in Italy or Spain.
Heck yes... I got tired of all the black bitchy fat whitey hating assholes that moved up into the Mojave Desert because they got squeezed out of LA area by Mexicans... they would call in some gangsters if you stole a parking space from them... they all have a cell phone hanging off their head all the time..... BTW, three card Monte, what happens if you just quit when you are ahead a little? Do the other guys take the money back.. that's the way to beat that game, they let you win some to get you to bet big... I suppose you could pull out your cell phone and act like there was a disaster somewhere and just run like crazy...
Lots of spec housing the coast is popular with europeans as second homes. www.globalpropertyguide.com