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While concentrating on the Spanish housing market, maybe we should not ignore a similar scenario played out in the biggest economy in the world. Similar falls, similar reasons, a similar disaster.
And similarly, with no end in sight and nothing but further gloom to look forward to. At least in Spain we have Spanish corruption and illegal building to blame, in the US it appears to be bankers greed, mainly. Maybe that bankers greed is a more relevant factor in Spain too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/31/us-economy-consumers-house-prices-fall
Unfortunately we can’t blame Bush on this side of the Atlantic, nor Clinton.
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@Rocker wrote:
While concentrating on the Spanish housing market, maybe we should not ignore a similar scenario played out in the biggest economy in the world. Similar falls, similar reasons, a similar disaster.
And similarly, with no end in sight and nothing but further gloom to look forward to. At least in Spain we have Spanish corruption and illegal building to blame, in the US it appears to be bankers greed, mainly. Maybe that bankers greed is a more relevant factor in Spain too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/31/us-economy-consumers-house-prices-fall
Unfortunately we can’t blame Bush on this side of the Atlantic, nor Clinton.
The problems in the US/Spanish economies were not caused by their respective housing crashes. They were caused by their respective housing booms (or rather the crazy lending that led to the booms)
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I’ve always thought that it was too easy merely to blame the many faults in the Spanish housing market on ‘Spanish’ practices, alone. The over-building in unsuitable locations, by crooked developers aided by crooked politicians is well documented, but less attention has been paid to the bank’s involvement, mainly Cajas.
It was easier to blame the Armani-suited brigade of evil agents of all sorts, from developers to estate agents, but on the wider picture, they’re small fry; along with those horrible crooks running town halls, like Jesus Gil. They were all easy targets for justifiable anger.
But, looking at the world canvas, a far bigger cause of the Spanish housing market disaster comes from outside Spain – the market crash instigated by crazy US mortgage lending which the clever people at Lehmans, Goldman Sachs and the others then sold around the world to gullible bankers everywhere.
The recession hit hard, and the weakest went down the hardest, and I can’t think of anything weaker than the over-heated Spanish housing market by 2007. Spanish banks and Cajas lent billions to developers and any expat wanting a mortgage merely had to sign his name on some bogus application form, and promise to repay the loan over the next hundred years or so.
It’s almost a relief for an expat like myself, looking for an explanation, to look further afield than the almighty mess all around me.
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