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| Economy |
| Spanish intelligence probing debt "attacks"-report |
| 2010-02-16 |
| Spain's intelligence services are investigating the role of investors and media in debt market turbulence over the last few weeks, El Pais reported on Sunday. Citing unnamed sources, El Pais said the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) was looking into "speculative attacks" on Spain following the Greek debt crisis. "The (CNI's) Economic Intelligence division...is investigating whether investors' attacks and the aggressiveness of some Anglo-Saxon media are driven by market forces and challenges facing the Spanish economy, or whether there is something more behind this campaign," El Pais said. Officials at the CNI were not available for comment. The report comes days after Public Works Minister Jose Blanco protested "somewhat murky manoeuvres" were behind financial market pressure on Spain. "None of what is happening in the world, including the editorials of foreign newspapers, is coincidental or innocent," Blanco said. Economists have cast doubt on forecasts that Spain's economy will grow by some 3 percent by 2012, on which the government has based predictions it will cut back on its gaping budget deficit. Some economists have said Spain's deficit could be more of a threat than Greece to the euro, the common currency of 16 European countries. Spain's deficit has soared to 11.4 percent of its gross domestic product amid its deepest recession in decades, but the government has pledged to cut the gap back to a eurozone limit of 3 percent by 2013 by cutting 50 billion euros in spending. Markets doubt that Spain will be able to cut back drastically on spending with unemployment running at 20 percent and a big slice of the budget in the hands of fiercely independent regional governments. Underscoring those doubts, the premium demanded by investors for buying Spanish rather than German government bonds ES10YT=RR has risen in recent weeks and the cost of insuring Spanish bonds against default by the government has also risen. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #13 The question is whether it was caused by his experiences, or is just 'who he is'. Glenmore, everything I've read says that the experience of the Holocaust made people more intensely themselves, whatever their inborn nature... including those with some sort of flaw that led them to crack under the pressure. Soros is a psychopath. Under normal conditions he would perhaps merely have grown up to torment his wife and employees instead of chosen portions of the world. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-02-16 21:04 |
| #12 I read his autobiography. My take is he is amoral, and that is his personality makeup. He mimics normal emotions but doesn't feel them. He accounts of his life in Hungary were boring, and IRRC, almost devoid of emotion. Life reading a dry manuascript, not a chain of harrowing events. Eerie. |
| Posted by: Cromosh Threatle9076 2010-02-16 19:39 |
| #11 Soros sounds amoral. The question is whether it was caused by his experiences, or is just 'who he is'. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-02-16 19:25 |
| #10 I thought Soros *was* a Juice, grom. Of sorts. Of sorts, indeed. Kroft: “And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.” Soros: “Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that’s when my character was made.” Kroft: “In what way?” Soros: “That one should think ahead. One should understand that—and anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a—a very personal threat of evil.” Kroft: “My understanding is that you went … went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.” Soros: “Yes, that’s right. Yes.” Kroft: “I mean, that’s—that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?” Soros: “Not, not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t … you don’t see the connection. But it was—it created no—no problem at all.” Kroft: “No feeling of guilt?” Soros: “No.” Kroft: “For example, that, ‘I’m Jewish, and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be these, I should be there.’ None of that?” Soros: “Well, of course, ... I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was—well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in the markets—that is I weren’t there—of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would—would—would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the—whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the—I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.” Peretz’s conclusion: So this is the psychodrama that has been visited on American liberalism. We learn Soros never has nightmares. Had he been tried in a de-Nazification process for having been a young cog in the Hitlerite wheel, he would have felt that, since other people would have confiscated the same Jewish property and delivered the same deportation notices to the same doomed Jews, it was as if he hadn’t done it himself. He sleeps well .... |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-02-16 19:19 |
| #9 Iberia isn't really at the front of my list of important topics normally. Same here. However, a default in Greek or Spanish sovereign debt will most likely cause a crisis for the US Treasury. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2010-02-16 12:56 |
| #8 I thought Soros *was* a Juice, grom. Of sorts. Which is part of why the whole group-identity thing sucks. There's all sorts in your average large-scale group. Are the Socialists still in charge of Spain? I've lost track, to be honest. Iberia isn't really at the front of my list of important topics normally. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-02-16 12:09 |
| #7 Have they blamed the Juice yet? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-02-16 09:05 |
| #6 ...unless the French get their hands on him. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-02-16 08:53 |
| #5 Soros should possibly be in jail for a number of reasons, particularly his shady UN related deals. However, his speculating on the currency markets is not one of them. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2010-02-16 08:46 |
| #4 My immediate reaction is that George Soros is behind any shenanigans in a market like this. Look at what he and his bought pols and bankers did with the "purchase" of assets by One West bank. This is the croniest of capitalists and should have be jailed for life for his previous crimes. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2010-02-16 08:05 |
| #3 People who want some return on their money are obviously the new terrorists. BP of the Risk Mitigation Front! |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2010-02-16 06:25 |
| #2 "None of what is happening in the world,... Really?. Welcome to the Hotel California. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2010-02-16 03:50 |
| #1 "None of what is happening in the world, including the editorials of foreign newspapers, is coincidental or innocent," Blanco said. Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you. |
| Posted by: tipper 2010-02-16 00:11 |