Revisit Harding and Evans-Pritchard

In a previous post ( Pain in Spain? says The Times of Aznar ) I criticized an article by James Harding who published in the Times, under the title of Pain in Spain? his prediction, according to rumors in the City of London, that after the debacle of Northern Rock the banks of Spain were next.

I promised to wait and see if the prediction of the business pages of The Times had any truth to it. More than a week has gone by and the banks in Spain are as strong as ever.
Nothing has happened, and nothing much is going to happen in the banks in Spain. If anything the Spanish industrialists are somewhat worried that the banks of other European countries, like the UK and Germany, could be overexposed to the subprime market in the USA.

Now I am going to tell you why what happened to Northern Rock CANNOT happen in Spain.
When you ask for a mortgage in Spain the bank studies your credit record, you need to have a good, stable job where you have been working for years and where you are secure legally as a member of staff, you need to put up a big deposit, and most times somebody from your family -your parents most likely- have to put up their house as security.
The difference to the way they do things in the USA and even in Britain could not be greater.

We would appreciate if the right-wing newspapers of Britain stopped this campaign trying to bring down the government of Zapatero.
There are Spanish soldiers fighting, and dying, for the UN in Afghanistan and in Libano, you know. Just in case you thought that there are only British soldiers there. Most British do not know, they believe -that’s what they are told by their gutter press- that they are the only ones carrying the burden.
It needed to be pointed out, I am sorry for bringing up the subject.

As to Mr Evans Pritchard, who predicted the most horrible things for Spain [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (The Daily Telegraph, London, 12 July 2007)] and I exposed his arguments in my post
¿ Can Spain have a Depression with an Economy Growing at More than 3 % a Year ? now says that Japon is going bust.
It is the turn of Japan, now? I don’t think so.
I read today several British newspapers and magazines. All were full of advertisements by Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Honda, Toyota, Suzuki and a long etc. They were advertisements for products that are not made in Britain and which have no equivalent made in this country.
How different were the advertisements for British products! Most were for food and clothing and most of that not even grown or made here.
Also, the newspapers keep on pushing sales of houses in Spain and other countries. I don’t believe it is a good thing for Britain that so many British people buy places abroad. That people bleed their country dry and also if they move over there and live out of their pensions and savings and investments in Britain, obviously it is a great and steady loss of money for Britain.
I am Spanish, but I live and work in Britain and I think that my dear countrymen if they want money they can bloody well work for it, like I have to do.

I am not alone in thinking that we won’t survive for long in the UK washing each other’s clothes.

Britain is NOT “a Banana Republic”, as the head of CBI said

Mr Richard Lambert, head of the Confederation of British Industries said that the run on Northern Rock Bank has made Britain look like a Banana Republic.
The British gutter press publishes jokes showing the “Bank of England twinned with Paraguay.”
It is quite mistaken, it shows how little the British know of the world and how out of touch they are with outside realities.

I’ll tell you about Banana Republics.

Let’s take Uruguay: A few years ago a big bank, Banco Comercial, went bust.
It destroyed the savings, livelihood and businesses of thousands of people in Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina -among them members of my family, that’s why I know.
The owner, Peirano, from a well-known Southamerican banking family, scarpered to Miami and he is there, safely spending the money he filched from the bank.
The government didn’t pay the people back the money they were owed and they have no hopes of ever getting it.
The difference with what happened in Britain the other week couldn’t be bigger.

What happens is that the Fascists in Britain woudl have liked to see the Bank of England doing nothing, and let a disaster happen, as they have advised in the pages of the Telegraph and the Mail, then turn around and criticize the Labour Government and the Bank of England for doing nothing and letting the crisis run unchecked.
The people expect that their elected government when faced with a crisis, solves it, not just sit and let things take their course: argueably that’s what they did in Britain back in the Depression of the Thirties and see what happened at the time.
Any idiot can do nothing and let matters take their course and that is the advice of the Telegraph and the Mail, claiming that the intervention of the Bank of England signals the End of Capitalism in Britain !
I believe that Capitalism is going to last longer than me and you.

The comparison with a real Banana Republic like Uruguay couldn’t be more unfair to Britain and Mr Lambert is doing a disservice to his country in saying that. It creates fear and mistrust.
And in Uruguay they don’t even grow bananas, ’cause they are too lazy for that.

Ruiz Mateos, a Spanish vulture of the Opus Dei, hovers over Northern Rock

British newspapers publish today that Ruiz Mateos, the infamous owner of RUMASA, wants to buy Northern Rock, the bank in trouble in Britain.
Ruiz Mateos has a long and florid story. Recently he was condemned to several years in prison but didn’t go to jail, because he is over 70 years old -nice laws in Spain!

Read it, in Spanish at http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2007/06/26/espana/1182894706.html

Now you British criminals know where to go when you get old. You can steal in Spain and if you are over 70 years old you’ll be sent home, to Marbella, with the other crooks.

When the Socialists won the first time, shortly after the death of Franco, the second famous thing they did was to confiscate RUMASA, the holding of Ruiz Mateos.
(The first thing they did was to shoot dead the leader of grapo, a terrorist group.)

Ruiz Mateos, with money from the Opus Dei, built his holding, RUMASA, buying bankrupt businesses and putting them back on their feet.
Oh, a genius of finances, you’ll say, you innocent gringo.
It was easy: He didn’t pay the taxes, and didn’t pay the Social Security bills. He used that money to buy another business, did the same thing again, everything snowballed and he counted on the government not daring call his bluff. In the confusion after the dead of Franco he got away with it, for a time.
The government of Felipe Fonzalez confiscated RUMASA; Ruiz Mateos run away; he was sent to prison in Germany; he went bonkers.
We saw him, dressed up as Superman, in the door of the tribunal: a ridiculous, bizarre man.

In Spain we call these financiers Inverted Midas: King Midas touched sh** and turned it into gold. Our Spanish financiers touch gold and turn it into sh** !

Things must be real bad in Britain if this kind of vultures are coming here to feed on the corpses of your businesses.

Opus Dei always gets involved in education, and what happened not long ago? Britain had an Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly who belongs to Opus Dei.
Education in this country is been taken over by private schools.
She is now in another department, of Housing.
And this vulture of the Opus Dei, Ruiz Mateos, is mentioned as trying to buy a mortgage bank.
It is a conspiration if ever I saw one.

If you thought that the Opus Dei was a figment of the imagination of Dan Brown, we Spaniards know better. In Spain when a father wants his son to be a clever thief he sents him to a school of Opus Dei, so they will teach him how to steal. It is common knowledge over there.

The Jesuits and Opus Dei originated in Spain. Both sects are poisonous catholic plants sprung from the rotten soil of Spain and curiously both their founders were born in towns not very far apart, Loyola and Barbastro respectively.
Ruiz Mateos has twelve children, all belong to the Opus Dei, all are Spanish fascists.
They are hungry, they all want to be millonaires and this is the big chance for the thirteen vultures. Rumasa never could buy a bank in Spain, it is closed shop for bankers ovre there -although Opus Dei already has one bank in Spain, Banco Popular… Come to think of it, the name of the political party of Aznar is Partido Popular.
Must be a coincidence.

Pain in Spain? says The Times of Aznar

The campaign of Aznar to spread mistrust against the Spanish government of Zapatero continues with an article in the second page of the business section of The Times, Friday 21st September 2007. Judge for yourselves ! (The italics are mine)
Pain in Spain? James Harding
“Asked yesterday where we should be looking for the next casualities of the credit crunch, the head of one of London’s biggest investment banks was unequivocal: Spain.
The bankers, investors, property companies and construction companies behind the unprecedented splurge of building on the Spanish costas could be badly hit. The hundreds of thousands of Brits with recently acquired bolt-holes there would not be immune, either.
Cracks are appearing in the adobe. Spreads on credit default swaps, insurance policies against default, have ballooned for some Spanish Banks.
It’s a bold time, therefore, for Spain’s huge saving bank La Caixa to float its €22 billion industrial holding offshoot, Criteria. ”
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El Médico y el Buscón

Lo conocimos por primera vez cuando estudiantes de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias. Venía rodeado de fama, era joven, tenía pinta así como a Django -alguna me entenderá- había estudiado en Francia y hecho descubrimientos en Bioquímica.
Estuvo cobrando como profesor un año y cuando empezaron las clases, nos dio un par de clases y renunció.
Normal en los médicos uruguayos, casi todos acumulan media docena de empleos, los vas a buscar a A, no esta salió para B, donde no está, aún no llegó a C. Y en ese plan.
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Kamikaze en Montevideo, 1973

El libro más famoso del Premio Nobel de Literatura Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (nacido en Trinidad, 1932) seguramente es “The Return of Eva Perón with The Killings in Trinidad” -hay traducción en español: “El regreso de Eva Perón”.
Este libro, que inauguró un nuevo estilo de reportaje, estudia las sociedades del Tercer Mundo ex-colonial. La deplorable carrera de crímenes y locuras de un delincuente y revolucionario negro en Trinidad; las convulsiones argentinas al regreso de la momia de Eva Perón y sus efectos en ese descentrado pais; el viaje al Congo de Conrad son un documento imprescindible de conocer.

Uno de sus capítulos, por demás corto pero incisivo, se llama “Kamikaze in Montevideo”. Es el Montevideo convulso tras la guerra civil tupamara y el golpe de estado de 1973.
Si algún uruguayo piensa inconcebible que se compare su decadente sociedad de entonces y de ahora con otras del Tercer Mundo, que piense que esta visión es la de la civilización analizando la barbarie.
Lo más deplorable es comprobar cuánto de lo que el Premio Nobel observó en 1973 sigue igual hoy.

Coloco aquí este fragmento del libro, con fines de información, pues los uruguayos apenas tienen acceso a la cultura europea, pero recomiendo al interesado que haga un esfuerzo y lo compre. Le enseñará mucho.

No lo he traducido para que el interesado lo haga. Además considero que el tema es delicado y tal como en el pasado los libros peligrosos se dejaban en Latín, la lengua de cultura, conviene dejar esto en Inglés, la lengua de cultura de hoy para que no tengan acceso fácil ignorantes y peligrosos fanáticos. El que no sepa que se enseñe y dejará de ser un bárbaro.

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