Unemployment record in Spain

Una frase corta resume el panorama: tanto empleo por año, como España en 2008, no había destruido ningún país europeo desde 1932, cuando la Alemania de Brüning vio destruir 1,3 millones en la Gran Depresión, siendo la clave del ascenso del nazismo.

M. Brena, De España hasta los cantares (08/01/2009)

Update on the gloomy Spanish unemployment rate (in Spanish).

Now we have left the year 2008 behind, INEM (National Employment Institute) has published the annual data on employment and social security. Last year was one of the worse years for the employment in Spain due to the economic crisis.

In 2008 the figure of unemployed people registered in INEM went up by 999,416 people to 3,128,963 people on the dole, a 46.9% increase on the 2007 unemployment figure. This the highest figure since the INEM register started, even higher than with the previous accounting methodologies for the unemployment; the latest method dates from 1996. The current figure is higher than the January 1988 record of 3,069,088 unemployed.

According to the Eurostat in November 2008, the unemployment rate in the European Union is 7.2% and in the euro-zone, 7.8%. Spain with its 13.4% is the Euro member with the highest unemployment rate for the seventh consecutive month. Slovakia is the second one with 9.1%; the lowest unemployment rates are in Holland (2.7%), Austria (3.8%), and Ciprus (3.9%).

Spain has the biggest unemployment increase from 8.6% to 13.4% in 2008; Poland's unemployment rate was slashed by 2% to 6.5%; Germany's one decreased by 1.2%.

Actually, the amount of unemployed people is much higher than 3,128,963 if we remove the make-up of the INEM figures, which don't include:
- employed people with limited availability or job-hunters with special work conditions, who amount to 150,680 people;
- "other unemployed" or temporary subsidised field workers: 237,757 people;
- unemployed workers who are undertaking training courses at INEM, trade unions and other institutions;
- workers affected by redundancies;
- first-job hunters.

In total a figure of roughly 1 million unemployed people who have disappeared from the statistics.

Even more, we could deduct from the figure of employed people those children who have been registered with the Social Security to be awarded school insurance (who shouldn't be counted as workers).

So how many unemployed are there in Spain actually?

Love and freedom.

Wish you a happy 2009

Happy New Year 2009: I wish you all love and freedom.

Lula contra la redistribución de pérdidas

El coste de la crisis no puede repartirse si no se repartió la ganancia.

Lula da Silva, II Encuentro Empresarial Brasil-Unión Europea (22/12/2008)

Totalmente de acuerdo con esta negación. Se llama coherencia, de la cual la mayoría de los políticos no ha oído hablar.

Sin embargo, esta negación es incompleta. Yo digo No a la redistribución de pobreza propugnada por el socialismo, sean ganancias o pérdidas. Es ineficiente, injusta, inútil e ineficaz.

Fuera el Estado entrometido, fuera los gobernantes que salvan a sus amigotes y resuelven su desastrosa gestión con dinero de los contribuyentes. Arriba el Mercado, porque el Mercado (que no el Estado) somos todos los ciudadanos.

Feliz Navidad.

ACA exam-qualified!

I am pleased to announce that I have passed all my ACA exams as of yesterday!! Hurray!!

Now I am going and find my name (in tiny font) in the FT. Hehe.

Love and freedom.

Fábula del auditor y el pastor de ovejas

Estaba un hombre dando de pastar a su rebaño de ovejas, cuando de repente aparece por el inhóspito camino una camioneta Navigator 4×4 full equip.
Se detiene frente al viejito y se baja un chaval de no más de 30 años. Traje negro “Armani”, camisa blanca “Hugo Boss” y zapatos “DKNY”; se acerca al viejo y le dice:
- Señor, si yo le adivino cuántas ovejas tiene ud. en su rebaño, ¿me regala una?
El viejo responde con algo de asombro:
- Sí, cómo no.
Entonces el joven vuelve a su 4×4 y saca una Toshiba Trío Tecra 9000 Pentium VII a 4.5Ghz con 1TB de RAM. Se conecta a la Red de Redes, baja una base de datos de 900 MB. Entra a una página de la NASA, mediante un satélite identifica la zona exacta de donde está el rebaño, calcula el promedio histórico del tamaño de una oveja tipo “Merina” mediante una tabla dinámica de Excel y, con la ejecución de algunas Macros personalizadas en Visual Basic, logra completar el diagrama de flujo. Después de tres horas le responde al viejo:
- Usted tiene 1347 ovejas, 256 machos y 1091 son hembras y 104 pueden estar embarazadas.
El viejo asintió y le dijo que efectivamente, así era, y que se podía llevar una oveja. El joven tomó una y la cargó en su 4×4. Estaba por irse, cuando el viejo lo detuvo y le preguntó:
- Disculpe, pero si yo llegase a adivinar cuál es su profesión, ¿Ud. me devuelve mi oveja?
El joven le dijo sonriente:
- Seguro, hombre - mientras abría la puerta de su 4X4 para marcharse.
El viejo entonces contestó: - Usted es Auditor.
El joven, sorprendido completamente, dijo: - ¡Exacto! ¿Cómo se dio cuenta?
El viejo le respondió: - Por 4 razones.
- Primero, por ser un chulo vacilón;
- Segundo, vino sin que yo le llamara;
- Tercero, me cobró por decirme algo que yo ya sabía;
- Y cuarto, se nota que no tiene ni idea del negocio. ¡Devuélvame a mi perro!

(via Javier Ruiz)

Spanish MPs' ignorance

Most citizens think that the government and the politicians should take care of the Nation because: a, that is why we pay them; and b, that they know more than the average citizen. Ja-ja-ja (sad laugh).

As the sarcastic interviews of TV program CQC show (surprisingly this time teasing non-PP politicians), the Spanish Members of Parliament (MPs) and many other politicians are plainly ignorants and able only to use the rethoric in their own benefit and to hide their embarrassment.

Politicians' shameless behaviour will end up converting us all to agorism. Fight the politicians. Bin them all! A la calle todos!

(via Jorge Valin)

Meeting with Albert Esplugas

Last Sunday I had the pleasure to meet Albert Esplugas, proud blogger of RedLiberal. We had an interesting conversation over a drink at an elegant pub in Bayswater, London.

Albert is a tall, slender, young professional guy with a geeky hint in his talk who tries to write an average of two posts a day in his blog. Having born in Barcelona and sharing nowadays a life in London with his girlfriend, Albert loves chatting about philosophy and tasting new cocktails: he is afraid of neither being wrong or facing a new discovery. We talked about the metaphysics of the blog-sphere and about libertarian initiatives. I must admit that those two hours flew by and I am grateful that he accepted meeting a complete stranger which happened to be one of his readers.

Albert is currently having a great discussion with Citoyen about the general idea of redistribution of resources. In this post, they argue about the re-distribution of human organs. As I comment in his post:

Absorbing, bright debate. Well-mannered, intelligent discussions like this one refresh the hopes set on the potential of the blog-sphere. As I told you verbally, chapeau and congrats for your blog. The same to Citoyen. Keep up the good word.

Love and freedom.