Some people have been telling me that the mainstream Spanish media, particularly the television news media, is giving a somewhat upbeat impression of the Spanish economy and the property situation. Is the Spanish media treating people like mushrooms by keeping them in the dark and feeding them on err...manure by giving a deliberately false impression of the ensuing disastrous economic and housing situation in Spain? The reason why I am asking this question is that throughout the economic boom of the late 1980's in Britain the mainstream news media like the BBC and ITN and the quality newspapers like the Murdoch owned papers didn't seem to want to tell people that the then Chancellor Nigel Lawson was running the UK economy into the ground by continually pumping up the housing bubble and that he was reluctant to do anything about it because it was a run-up to the General Election and he knew that higher house prices made the middle classes feel richer and would vote the Tories back into power. The media in Britain at the time didn't seem to have a critical word to say about fat boy Lawson but it was obvious to anybody with half a brain that he was injecting huge doses of inflation into the economy that will ultimately lead to economic disaster and a devastating recession in 1991.
I particularly remember reading the so-called quality newspapers "The Times" and "The Sunday Times" during the 1980's boom and it gave not the slightest hint of the economic disaster to come and that Britain was heading for the worst recession since the Great Depression. Could it be that the newspapers in question are both owned by Rupert Murdoch and he was clearly a supporter of the Thatcher Government and he didn't want his newspapers to say anything too critical of the Government? For a number of years now in the "Sunday Times" newspaper there has been a economics reporter called "David Smith" who seems to wear rose tinted spectacles every time he writes about the British economy and there is an american economics reporter by the name of "Irwin Stelzer" who appears to be always upbeat about the american economy. Both these people seem to live on the planet Mars. What they write is pure bilge and I was wondering is the reason why they write the bilge that they write because Ruport Murdoch supports the Tory Party after having supported Thatcher and then Tony Blair and now its Cameron/Clegg?
The BBC and ITN are no better than the Murdoch press in that they are not prepared to stick their neck out and tell reality as it is for fear that they will be accused of political bias and so from these news outlets we tend to get a cosy view of the British economy when in fact Britain hasn't had an economy for the last thirty years.
Therefore I return to my original question, why isn't the Spanish media telling the Spanish people the truth about the disastrous economic situation that Spain finds itself in and not prepared to the truth which is that Spain is not in a recession, it is in actual fact in a depression with Great Depression era unemployment rates that will ultimately rise to 50% and that the economic Depression will last ten years. The news media in Spain are also reluctant to tell the truth about the disastrous property market in Spain and refuses to state the obvious that house prices will fall by 90% from peak to trough and that places like Andalucia and the Costa Del Sol will not be immune from the Great Spanish Property Disaster and will also experience house price falls of 90%, particularly in obscure places on the Costa Del Sol like Fuengirola.
Could it be that the reason why the Spanish media are deliberately trying to be upbeat about Spain's economy and housing market is because they fear that if people really knew what was happening then there would be a mass panic, revolution and civil war in the country?
The Spanish media should report the following as fact given that it is obvious to anybody that lives in the country:
- Spain has entered a ten year long depression
90% peak to trough falls in house prices
5 million vacant/unsold properties up for sale
Unemployment rate of 50%
Many people giving up looking for work
Many people relying on food handouts to survive
Some people will experience starvation
Massive rise in suicide rate
Huge rise in the cost of living
Wages and pensions cut drastically
Peoples life savings wiped out
Many British expats will sell their Spanish homes at a considerable loss and return to the UK pennyless
Once Greece exits the Euro it is obvious that Spain will be next
Spain is fast becoming a third world country
Video: 20% of houses in Spain sit empty
.jpg)
