The Pain in Spain

The other dominoes in Europe are getting set up to fall.  Now it's really just about where the spotlight decides to focus.  If you look hard at Greece, it looks bad.  If you look hard at Italy, it looks bad.  If you look at Spain, it looks bad.

(Reuters) - Spaniards say they see only more hardship ahead after a parliamentary election on Sunday that is expected to bring in a new government charged with combating an economic crisis.

A gloomy mood hung over the country on Saturday, with little apparent excitement for the election.

High unemployment, cuts in public spending, and fears that Spain could become the next euro zone country to need a rescue package for its debt problems have sapped morale and dominated the election campaigns.

Lines of people formed in central Madrid on Saturday morning -- not in anticipation of polling stations opening, but to buy tickets for the national Christmas lottery, known as El Gordo, which could make them instant millionaires.

"We're going to buy lottery tickets to see if we win, that's the only way things will change," said Ana Maria Gomez, 42-year-old housewife. "Everyone is very pessimistic, there's no work there's no hope."

The government sold bonds on Thursday with a yield of almost 7 percent -- a level of borrowing cost that led to bail-outs in other euro zone countries.

Here;  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/19/us-spain-election-idUSTRE7AI0H120111119

What happens to a society where there is no hope?  Do they look inward and say to themselves, "as a society we have been lazy, have slacked on education, have been financially irresponsible and now we are going to need to pull up our pants and spend the next 20 years working hard to get back into good economic shape."

Hardly.

What humans do is blame others for their poor choices.  Look for the Spaniards to first get mad at their government...then when they realize that doesn't do any good, look for them to get mad at some financial institutions for loaning them too much money that they now can't pay back...and when that doesn't change anything, look for them to get mad at an outside source.  It will either be some other country or some other people group.

Look what happened in Germany in post WW1.   They were financially without hope and eventually they turned their anger against the Jews....and the rest is now a nasty piece of history.

Now let's watch what America does.  We have borrowed way too much money from outside sources and now we are blaming China for our economic woes by saying they are manipulating their currency...and tensions are rising between the USA and China as Obama goes into their turf and begins to announce a buildup of US military presence.