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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (673281)9/13/2012 11:55:35 AM
From: tejek  Respond to of 1578705
 
But its true the Spanish economy was strong as well.......and it wasn't just because of the housing bubble. Spain was developing a strong middle class and growing its major industries. Housing was just one aspect of the economy. Unfortunately, Spain has some very large banks and they messed up badly. When they got in trouble over housing, they stopped lending and the economy crashed.
I'm not too familiar with the Spanish economy, but from what you are telling me, it sounds much like what happened here.

Yes, but Spain was not as mature an economy as the US so it was seeing a lot of positive movement........substantive growth of its middle class for an example. BTW Spain is the 14th largest economy in the world.

But you know why the banks messed up here. It's because the housing bubble made everyone greedy, especially the banks. Hence they started lending to anyone and everyone, including those who had no business getting loans in the first place.

That's right..........except the Spanish banks were also lending to weaker economies like Greece.

Therefore, even though housing is just one aspect of the economy here, it was perhaps the main reason why our bubble burst. So why couldn't that be likewise in Spain?

Its similar......in some ways worse, their loans were not as well collateralized.

However, that's where any similarities end. Germany forced Spain into austerity whereas the US chose stimulus. So while the US's unemployment rate is dropping; Spain's is up to 24% and Spaniards are fleeing to other countries.