The sky is not falling

People here need to remember that any story in the Wall Street Journal that quotes "experts" from the American Enterprise Institute should be treated with extreme caution.

The story presents this scary graph:



Examined more closely on a quarter/quarter basis vs year/year, it looks like Spain is pulling out of the recession:



I'm not sure what the point has been of all the fear-mongering that's been going on over the last month. If you look at any GDP chart of Europe, you get pretty much the same.

Here's the UK for comparison:

Traffic accidents

For some reason, traffic accidents were on my mind today, so I was a bit surprised when I went for lunch today to find a car lying upside down on the road near our garage entrance and another crashed against a brick wall next to it.

The ambulance driver was standing there having a cigarette, so I assume nothing really bad happened. I thought about taking a picture, but it seemed kind of rude.

When I came back, everything was gone except for the broken glass, bits of car and various fluid stains. I think that intersection could really use a stop sign... many of people don't seem to realize that just because you don't have a sign, doesn't mean the other guy has one. I wonder how well four-way stops would work here.

The PP clown show

A member of the "New Generation" of PP just resigned from the Road Safety Commission after causing an accident while drunk.

The PP was shocked and dismayed and stated: "Es un error que le puede pasar a cualquiera".

Apparently so, since in Spain 30 per cent of fatal accidents involved at least one driver over the legal alcohol limit (the highest drunk-driving rate in the EU).

Reward for hard work

There's been a lot written lately about an alleged lack of competitiveness in the club-med countries.

One theme I've seen is that Spanish view financial success as a sort of gift from above, and thus feel that it should be shared, contrasted to the Anglo-Saxon approach where individual success should lead to individual rewards.

I don't think either side has a monopoly on the truth... I've experience the grasshopper and ant story first hand with my extended family here (we get to be the ants). On the other hand, in the US, the attitude that "I'm rich because I work really hard" leads to all kinds of problems with social inequality.

In addition, most of the research that I've seen about performance-based pay suggest that it doesn't really lead to better results. It tends to lead to an obsessive focus on benchmarks vs reality, and decreased cooperation and trust among employees. My guess is that much of the justification for performance-based pay comes from the CEO's office, who would like to think that he makes huge amounts of money because he does such a good job.

Accidentally rewarding destructive behavior also played a big role in the financial crisis, with bankers thinking more about the commissions they would get for writing loans than about the long term health of their company.

To the outside world, Spain might look like a country of funcionarios and lazy workers with ultasecure jobs, but with 3 million small businesses of 10 employess or less, it also has one of the largest rates of small business employment. From an economic perspective, small business provides the ultimate in pay-per-performance, without having to construct weird and artificial benchmarks.

Bidding war for John Cobra

TV3 and Telecinco are in a bidding war for around 30,000-40,000 euros for who gets the honor of hosting John Cobra.

Sometimes I get a guilty pleasure from seeing really stupid people with giant egos. Remember Mahir?

Homer Simpson in Spain

One of the running jokes in the Simpsons is that Homer failed the second grade. "Ha ha ha!" laughs the American. "How can you possibly fail the second grade? What a looser!"

Homer Every Day from Noah K. on Vimeo.

I'm not sure this joke would be as funny here, since failing in school seems to be no just a habit, but a way of life.

Social stigma is an amazing motivational force. In this respect, the Spanish system seems to be the completely opposite of the Chinese, who spend their entire youth studying for that one big exam that will make or break them.

El hombre "perro"

Eurovision has just made my day. Count me as a new fan of John Cobra. Go Spain! This guy makes Chikilicuatre look like a fucking genius.

Spanish word of the day: el sidecar

Definition: A one-wheeled car for a single passenger, attached to the side of a motorcycle.

Pronounced: see-de-car

Death by structured products

My bank just tried to sell me their latest exploding financial product.

You get a 3 year bond from a major bank in Spain for 3%. Then the bank writes a CDS using that bond for another 1.5%. Woohoo! 4.5% yield on a 3 year A- bond!

(except for the tiny fact that in any restructuring, failure to pay or default will see you immediately lose 100% of your capital. You've just sold your rights for any recovery.)

The nice thing is that the sales guy pretty much admitted it was crap and that he was only flogging it for the commission.

I don't understand why banks are allowed to sell these things.

Who let the dogs out?

Very true letter in Tot Sant Cugat (in fact, I can hear the dogs barking in the distance as I type). We have been extremely lucky with our selection of neighbors in that respect. They might not talk to us beyond hello and goodbye, but at least they don't have a dog.

I'm not sure about the writer's suggestion of dog education (especially for older dogs), but I think five years in prison might do the trick.

Hace 10 anos que, buscando tranquilidad, nos trasladamos a vivir a Can Rabella (Mira-sol).

Hace 10 anos que estamos soportando, como podemos, el ruido casi permanente de los ladridos de los perros de algunos vecinos (bastantes).

A las 6.30 h de la mañana empiezan a sacar a los perros de paseo, guau, guau, guau. A las 7.30 h, guau guau, guau, a las 8.30 h, a las 9.00 h, guau, guau, guau.

Luego se van los denos a trabajar, a pasar el día fuera o de vacaciones y dejan a los perros en los jardines todo el día. Cuando llega el cartero, guau, guau, guau. Cuando llegan los jardineros, guau, guau, guau, cuado llega el barrendero, guau, guau, guau. A las 19.30 h, a las 20.00 h, a las 21.00 h, a las 22.00 h, paseada de perros guau, guau, guau (en verano se prolongan los paseos hasta las 24.00 h y más horas).

Este celestial música es la que escuchamos y sufrimos los vecinos que no tenemos perro, especialmente los de la calle Valldura y Pompeu Fabra, pasando por la calle Zaragoza, Joan Corominas etcétera etcétera, que es el área donde vive la que escribe. Que se puede hacer? Educar. Educar a los parros a que solo ladren cuando los ataquen o entren desconocidos en sus viviendas. Pero, sobre todo, educar a los dueños para que respeten la tranquilidad de sus vecinos. Este tema sería impensable que ocurriera en cualquier otro país de Europa…. Se lo aseguro yo, que he vivido varios anos en Francia y en Reno Unido.

Maria C

For the non-Spanish speakers out there:

10 years ago, seeking peace, we moved to live in Can Rabella (Mira-sol).

For 10 years we have had to stand the almost constant noise of barking dogs from neighbors and have had enough.

At 6.30am in the mornings the dogs go for a walk, woof, woof, woof. At 7.30am, woof woof, woof, 8.30am, 9.00am, woof, woof, woof.

Then the owners leave for the day to go to work or vacation and leave their dogs in the gardens all day. When the mailman arrives, woof, woof, woof. The gardeners, woof, woof, woof, the street sweeper, woof, woof, woof. At 7:30pm, at 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, the dogs go woof, woof, woof (summer walks are extended until midnight and later).

This is the heavenly music we hear and suffer as neighbors that have no dog, especially on Carrer Valladaura and Pompeu Fabra, continuing on Saragossa, Joan Corominas etc, which is the area where this writer lives. What can you do? Educate. Educate dogs to bark only when attacked or when strangers enter their homes. Above all, educate owners to respect the tranquility of their neighbors. This problem would be unthinkable in any other country in Europe as I have lived several years in France and the UK.

I'll leave it to the experts to determine whether her use of the Spanish versions of the street names suggests PP tendencies.

Lectures from abroad

From the kettle-pot-namecalling competition, we get rants from various Catalans living in foreign countries, complaining about the lack of adaptation by immigrants moving to Catalonia.

I suppose absence really does make the heart grow fondernationalist.

Some examples from the UK, Mexico, Holland or the USA. A Galician nationalist nutcase living in the UK even has an entire blog dedicated to bashing Colin Davies as not being Galician enough.