The War for Spain

I fully intended to ignore Spain this week. Really, truly I did. I had my letter all planned, but then a few notes drew my attention, and the more I reflected on them, the more I realized that the inflection point that I thought the ECB had pushed down the road for at least a year with their recent €1 trillion LTRO is now rushing toward us much faster than ECB President Draghi had in mind when he launched his massive funding operation.So, we simply must pay attention to what Spain has done this week – which, to my surprise, seems to have escaped the attention of the major media. What we will find may be considered a tipping point when the crisis is analyzed by some future historian. And then we'll get back to some additional details on the US employment situation, starting with a few rather shocking data points. What we'll see is that for most people in the US the employment level has not risen, even as overall employment is up by 2 million jobs since the end of the recession in 2009. And there are a few other interesting items. Are we really going to see 2 billion jobs disappear in the next 30 years?

But first, a personal note. My friend and fellow writer/economic blogger Mike "Mish" Shedlock's wife has ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. I have talked at length with him the past year as the disease progressed. It is a truly evil affliction. Mish has stayed the course, working with his wife, and now the options will soon be down to her communicating with a device that follows her eye movements to choose words on a computer screen. I cannot even imagine the pain of living with a loved one in the condition.

Mish is not asking for anything for his family, but he is sponsoring a raffle for ALS research. Please consider buying one or more tickets, or making a small donation to the Les Turner ALS Foundation. The money will go to research to find a cure, so that someday no one has to go through such pain. Thanks.

The War for Spain

In my book Endgame, co-author Jonathan Tepper and I wrote a chapter detailing the problems that Spain was facing. It was obvious to us as we wrote in late 2010 that there really was no easy exit for Spain. The end would come in a torrent of misery and tears. Tepper actually grew up in a drug rehab center in Madrid – as a kid, his best friends were…