There’s nothing like the prospect of empty supermarket shelves to convince people that an economic boom is well and truly over, and that’s just what Spain’s truck drivers are doing with their strike over fuel prices.
Even before the truckers started blockading highways and choking off fuel supplies, Spaniards were already shaking their heads and wondering where the good times went. After a decade of growth, people aren’t used to things going wrong here any more. Now house prices are falling, inflation is soaring, consumer confidence plunging and unemployment jumping.
The weather too has turned hostile in usually sunny Spain, with a bracing spring succeeded by a start to summer that has been almost English in its chilly humidity. The truckers’ protest aimed at stopping deliveries to shops and petrol stations has been the most dramatic sign so far that ordinary citizens are going to have to pay the price of the global credit crunch and hefty oil prices.
Meanwhile, the government seems to have frozen in the headlights. The international oil price isn’t its fault. But its offers of loans to persuade truckers to quit the business have been dismissed as recycled measures which already exist, just as criticisms are building of its relative inaction as the economy slams on the brakes.
Maybe Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who cancelled a speech on the economy originally scheduled for Monday, is better at governing during the good times. But then again, as half the point of his campaign before winning reelection in March had been to avert Spaniards’ gaze from imminent economic catastrophe, maybe he is just counting his lucky stars. Certainly, one gets the feeling that the type of feel-good social legislation of Zapatero’s first term, including legalising gay marriage, will win him fewer political points this time round, especially with his core working class constituency which is struggling to make ends meet. The first whiff of such a sea-change has come with a dramatic change of tone on immigration, with the Socialists, who oversaw a mass amnesty in 2004, now talking about persuading migrants to go home.
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My question is house prices are falling, inflation is soaring, consumer confidence plunging and unemployment jumping. house prices are falling because people are scared to buy if we are hitting bad time consumer confidence is plunging because the costs are increasing employment jumping because companies are getting ready for people not spending money and inflation is increasing because because prices are going up fast….link these together and do you not get the conclusion that if something was done about oil prices then none of this would be happening? prices wouldnt be going up so much inflation would stay steady etc etc. Wy have oil prices gone up so much here in spain my petrol has increased by 34cents (euros) in 8 weeks in the last year a total of 52cents….Bush has a hell of alot to answer to he creates war and ruins the world economics.
- Posted by Jeremy HodkinsonAlthough living currently in the EE.UU, it does strike me as silly at best to blame “W” for the our own economic problems. We seem quite capable of doing this to ourselves without outside assistance.
Let’s be content to support Simian Rights, the banning of corridas and doing Indian rain dances. That would be more spot on.
Padre Thyglow
- Posted by Padre Thyglow TheobsceneGlobal oil prices are rising not due to war, but to increase demand, most notably by India and China as their development increases and populations continue to swell. It’s not helped by the fact that reliance on fossil fuels is not being diminished. American gas prices are shooting up faster than ever before and so the whole world is feeling the crunch of a problem caused by the entire world. No one person or country is at fault for this and thus pointing fingers and hording resources at every opportunity will only cause more crises like this in the future.
- Posted by Tina MedinaI think that Bush has a longer view on fuel than any of us expected. The sand-eating Arabians have fooled us to believe that there’s enough oil left in the ground to pump for the coming 30 years. The reality is that they have over estimated their stocks to increase their allowed OPEC volume. Like in a bottle of orangejuice the bottem part is filled with rubbish, the oil sources are still pumping up the same amount of oil but they are gaining less fuel out of it. So there’s less fuel available for the same 86 mln barrels which are produced daily. Gentlemen, we have passed the peakoil moment !
Further 20% of the trade is held by brokers, they wait for the price to rise.
And last but not least the price of the dollar is dropping fast because Bush is printing more and more dollars to finance his war(s). The gold coverage for the dollar is yet 0,02%. This means China, India and Japan are buying everything for their soon to become useless dollars, because they have seen the value of their 1200 billion Dollarstock decreasing 30% in 5 YEARS.
My advice:
Wait for the bubble in house-market to be emptied than invest all your money in real estate, because everything that you’ve saved over the last 10 years will drop 50% in value if you have it on the bank.
Myself I’m working in the fishery branch. We have expensive ships using a lot of gasoil, but we will soon be out of business. Within a year all ships which are using too much fuel will go bankrupt or stop fishing. Already 30% of our fleet has stopped over the past year.
- Posted by Jim PorterWe will have to return to cheap ways of fishing with a minimum of gasoil…..