The economic crisis

Unfortunately everybody is familiar with the term "crisis" nowadays. Likely anyone who is reading this post has a friend or a family member (or maybe both) living within a dramatic situation. I read a painful piece of news three days ago: "The number of the unemployed people has reached six million for the first time within the Spanish democracy time". This datum seems very bad, but many economists around the world foretell that this figure will be worst. Surely the number of unemployed people will rise to seven millions after the end of this year (this post is being written in 2013).

In every media you can hear politicians saying "...despite the unemployment awful datum the main problem of this crisis is financial...". What sort of politicians can say this?, When, within the Spanish democracy history, the money (or banks) has become more imporant than people?. I won't say that politicians and banks are responsible for this crisis, but I think some of them have not done their work very well.

Anyway, everybody must do his or her best to leave this crisis behind. There are no clear rules that can lead us out of the crisis, but probably try to increase the social and economic human activity could be a first step. There seems to be a good first step, but we must be careful. If we think like economists, this solution sounds pretty good (people start to spend their savings - consumption is increased - new jobs are made - unemployment decreases - taxes for revenue are increased - larger budget to social benefits and research are held - ... shall we continue? ). Really, it sounds great, but we have a problem with the first stage on this process, there is no money. Most of the families have no savings. Instead they have a huge mortgage debt and a not insured job. From this perspective, it is very difficult to start the economic engine just described before.

So, it seems we (and mainly politicians and bankers) must put all the efforts to solve the problem arised among people and families, and then maybe we start to see the famous "green sprouts". Just remembering the famous and naive phrase said by the former president of the Spanish government (José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero)... "Los brotes verdes").

P.S. I am not an economist nor a statesman. I have no special knowledge of social and economic engineering.  So, maybe I am wrong.  However these words can help somebody,  since my intention was not going further.

By Miguel Angel Varona