The infamous and utterly misunderstood Mayan calendar, according to some, has it that we will all go poof in a cloud of cosmic debris on December the 21st, 2012. While quite complicated, and conflicted owing to scientific analysis and other discoveries, the prediction, should it prove true, might be a blessing as 2013, at least for Spain, looks to be an even harsher year than 2012 will turn out to be. Will anyone be saved?
Ex-Judge Baltasar Garzón might be if the European Magistrates for Democracy and Freedom have anything to say about it. They have petitioned the Justice Minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, for the over-turning of his banishment from the halls of jurisprudence.
The PP has pardoned other malefactors in their time, so the controversial case of Garzón should be no exception, at least in its consideration. Garzón has, in a way, been made a scapegoat in the competition between the PP and PSOE as to who has the most cases of corruption on-going at anyone time.
Whether it be the scandal in Andalucia over illegal retirement (PSOE) or the Caso Gürtel (PP), or the host of others everywhere in this country, no one party has hegemony over purity. The PP mayor of Legañes (population 187,000) earns 111,000 euros a year (compare with the president of Spain – population 46 million – who earns 78,000 annually). Bankia has been saved, at least for the moment. Bankia is Spain’s biggest domestic bank with total assets amounting to over 300 billion euros.
But over-exposed, like so many Spanish banks, to the real estate boom-and-bust (to the tune of 38 billion euros), it has been nationalized and will be injected with billions of euros to stabilize its existence. Too big to fail? Too corrupt to save? The bank’s three top dogs earned 10 million euros between them (the same three who helped run it into the ground; and yet there are those would audaciously tie remuneration to productivity!).
And if you are poor, that is, if you maintain less than 2000 euros in one of their accounts, you are charged 2 euros a month. Say, there’s an idea. If the government decided to do the same, tax the poor, they could probably solve the whole financial crisis in a second by forcing the poor into emigration or starvation, whichever came first. You might not be able to get any money from the children though.
El Mundo reports that 2.2 million of Spanish children live below the poverty level, an increase of 53 per cent from just three years ago. They have now been awarded the group most affected by the crisis, and yet politicians are still raising their salaries and the CEOE (Spanish Confederation of Businessmen) are demanding further cuts in pensions for you and your grandparents!
The deficit is merely a ruse by which the debt will be paid.