Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain*
The C Word- There's a shorter, updated table below. The USA has continued to move up, as has the UK.
- Interesting to note that, if New York City were included, it would have more cases even than Spain and Italy.
- Spain: We're all hoping - and some are praying - for the easing of at least some of our draconian restrictions next month. Though this will surely mean a loss of revenue for the State. At least via police fines. Offset by increased VAT/IVA income, I guess.
- My grandson in Madrid is one of the keenest hopers . . .
- I'm a fan of Mercadona, where the staff are clearly trained in customer orientation. Here's an interesting article on their wines, which I will follow up on this morning.
- María's Day 27. Increasingly desperate, like many folk, I guess.
- Are there really so many people who think they can get away for Easter?
- The 2 quotes are taken from the articles below, both from the Times. They rather point up - to me at least - why I've always thought the political project - not the economic one - is pie in the sky. But I could be very wrong of course, with the EU emerging stronger from this existential crisis:-
- Are Germany and northern European countries prepared to let the pandemic kill the EU? That is the explosive question asked accusingly by Italy, France and Spain as the contagion exposes, as never before, deep rifts and resentments at the heart of the EU. At issue are demands from the hardest-hit countries for the EU to share the enormous financial costs of fighting and then recovering from Covid-19. Doing so would mark a significant step to federalism. Failing to do so may tear the EU apart.
- The core problem is what it has always been: the elementary design flaw of the euro.
- Another amusing imitation of the great man, saviour of the USA.
- And an older - better - one which follows that on Youtube
- A warning: Today I got an email from an old friend which referred in the subject line to the recent death of my Dutch friend, Peter Missler, with the aim of enticing me into opening the mail and clicking on a link. Seeing it as suspicious, I checked and confirmed it was fake. I mention this here because I think it's the first time one of these emails has been so 'clever'. It's rather frightening, of course, that the bastards knew something about my recent private life. I'm sure opening the email would have been dangerous but clicking the link in it certainly would been
- Word of the day:- Acaparar: To grab, hoard, hog: To get/take the majority of. As in Residencias y hospitales acaparan la mayoría de nuevos contagios del coronavirus.
- I'm used to some strange Spanish variations on English film titles, but was a tad taken aback to see that the bluefin tuna is called the 'red tuna' here. The foto here doesn't provide an obvious explanation . . . A perverse people . . . .
No. of
Cases
000
|
No. of
deaths
000
|
By
deaths
per M
|
By
cases
|
By
deaths
per M
| |
Global
|
1700
|
82.4
|
13
| ||
Spain
|
158
|
16.1
|
316
|
2
|
1
|
Italy
|
148
|
18.9
|
283
|
3
|
2
|
Belgium
|
27
|
2.2
|
193
|
10
|
3
|
France
|
125
|
13.2
|
158
|
4
|
4
|
N'lands
|
23
|
2.5
|
123
|
5
| |
Switz'land
|
23
|
1
|
95
|
11
|
6
|
UK
|
74
|
9
|
91
|
7
|
7
|
Lux'berg
|
3
|
0.1
|
70
|
8
| |
Sweden
|
10
|
0.9
|
68
|
9
| |
USA
|
503
|
18.8
|
57
|
1
|
10
|
Iran
|
68
|
4.2
|
46
|
8
|
11
|
Ireland
|
8
|
0.3
|
43
|
12
| |
Portugal
|
16
|
37
|
13
| ||
Denmark
|
6
|
0.3
|
35
|
14
| |
Austria
|
14
|
30
|
15
| ||
Germany
|
113
|
2.7
|
27
|
5
|
16
|
Turkey
|
34
|
1
|
9
|
9
|
25
|
China
|
82
|
3.3
|
2
|
6
|
31
|
THE ARTICLES
Coronavirus pandemic leaves Europe between a rock and a hard place: Bruno Waterfield, the Times
A plea for debt sharing and ‘coronabonds’ has exposed toxic rifts between northern and southern states. After a series of crises and big gains for Eurosceptic populist parties, the European Union is especially vulnerable to the coronavirus.
Are Germany and northern European countries prepared to let the pandemic kill the European Union?
That is the explosive question asked accusingly by Italy, France and Spain as the contagion exposes, as never before, deep rifts and resentments at the heart of the EU.
At issue are demands from the hardest-hit countries for the EU to share the enormous financial costs of fighting and then recovering from Covid-19. Doing so would mark a significant step to federalism. Failing to do so may tear the EU apart.
Europe’s biggest political test since the end of the Second World War is manifested in a row over the “coronabonds” that Italy, France, Spain and others are demanding to fund economic recovery.
Nine, principally southern, countries insist that the EU must share the “no-limit” debt burden of post-pandemic economic recovery, meaning a common fund able to mobilise up to €1 trillion primarily earmarked for the worst hit countries, Spain and Italy.
Such a fund would need to be backed by EU bonds to raise hundreds of billions on financial markets. It would mean wealthier, less indebted countries in northern Europe taking the lion’s share of risk, thus easing the burden for higher borrowing, often poorer, nations in the south.
Finance ministers have been deadlocked for days. Bitterness is compounded by social distancing measures requiring EU talks to take place via video conference, depriving ministers and officials of the personal contact that defuses conflict and lubricates compromise.
Before yet another virtual meeting of eurozone finance ministers today, Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister, warned the Germans and Dutch that they will “erase Europe” if they uphold the euro’s existing rules that prohibit sharing debt.
“In the end … patient Europe will be dead,” he told Germany’s Bild newspaper. “If we do not seize the opportunity to put new life into the European project, the risk of failure is real.”
So far most measures to fight coronavirus outbreak — lockdowns, critical care beds, testing kits — are the responsibility of national governments. Supporters of European integration fear that the EU will be the loser and the nation state a winner. Brussels has already wound back its rules on state aid and public spending to give capitals the flexibility to fight the pandemic.
“The nation state, with economic stimulus, redirecting resources to health services and big national budgets, is going to be the hero in this crisis. The best the EU can do is get out of the way,” one ambassador said. “That is going to have consequences down the line for EU integration making coronabonds even more of a sacred cow.”
The consequences of the EU not issuing “coronabonds” would, its supporters argue, lead to long-term economic damage in high-debt countries, risking another eurozone sovereign debt crisis that could tear down the euro.
The demand for bonds is a big problem for Germany, the Netherlands and other northern countries that see debt sharing as a taboo, the reddest of red lines. They have all repeatedly promised their taxpayers that they would never become responsible for “fiscal transfers” by underwriting the borrowing of foreign governments.
These so-called “frugal” northern states have made a political virtue of the euro’s public spending limits. Their domestic austerity programmes have bred resentment among their higher borrowing, “profligate”, southern neighbours who, in turn, are perceived to have dodged reforms and weaved their way around the euro’s rules.
Two weeks ago during an exceptionally acrimonious video conference of European leaders, Mr Conte threatened to use Italy’s veto to block all EU decision-making unless his demands were met. “What will we say to our citizens if Europe does not prove capable of a united, strong and cohesive reaction in the face of an unpredictable and symmetrical shock of this epoch-making impact?” he said, according to an aide.
The summit, described by diplomats as the most difficult in a decade that has already seen the eurozone and migration crises, also heard Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, warn that northern Europeans were “putting at risk the entire European project”.
He warned that by opposing bonds, Germany would repeat the mistakes of the previous financial crisis when Berlin and its allies blocked debt sharing, “which sowed the seeds of disaffection and division with the European project and provoked the rise of populism”.
Speaking for northern Europe, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, said he could not “imagine any circumstances in which we agree with eurobonds or coronabonds”. He added: “It would take the eurozone to another sphere, it would be to cross the rubicon and go to a Union of transfers, far beyond what was envisaged in Maastricht.”
His stance was echoed by a “nein” from Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.
Since March 26, the language has deteriorated further. In one French briefing to Jean Quatremer, the veteran Brussels correspondent for Libération, Germany was warned that “finally, geopolitically, Germany will have solid enemies on its doorstep, for the first time since 1945” unless it agreed to the demands.
A marathon video conference on Tuesday night had to be stopped at one point when Bruno Le Maire, the usually urbane French finance minister, shouted at his Dutch counterpart who was speaking to oppose debt sharing. “Shame, shame on Europe, stop this clown,” he said.
The man at the receiving end, Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch finance minister, blamed much of the bad feeling on the Zoom-style video conferencing. “It's really difficult without personal contact,” he said today. “You can’t sit in a room to catch up with someone. Or look at someone and slap them on the shoulder.”
In late March, perhaps due to the distancing effect of video-conferencing, Mr Hoekstra enraged Spain and Italy by asking the European Commission to investigate why southern European countries have too little cash to fight coronavirus even though the eurozone economy has been growing for years.
If the EU does not agree to debt sharing, or ties loans to tough political conditions on economic reform, as with past eurozone bailouts to Greece and others, populists like as Italy’s Matteo Salvini, leader of the nationalist League, stand ready to make the political running.
“Italy has given and continues to give billions of euros each year to the EU, it deserves all the necessary support, but not through perverse mechanisms that would mortgage the country’s future,” Mr Salvini said yesterday. “I don’t trust loans coming from the EU. I don’t want to ask for money from loan sharks in Berlin or Brussels.”
The EU is caught between a rock and a hard place. If it goes for “coronabonds” it may buy some political space to fight Mr Salvini, Spain’s right-wing Vox party or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, but at the price of boosting populism in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland.
Voters in northern Europe were promised, with vows perpetually renewed for two decades, that the euro would not lead to a “transfer union” with their hard-earned national wealth heading south to shore up shakier economies. If that central promise is broken with “coronabonds” then the EU is in danger of lighting a fuse under the euro.
As the past decade has shown, on the eurozone, migration and the rise of populist parties north and south, the EU has an underlying malaise that makes it especially vulnerable to coronavirus.
2. The coronavirus crisis could blow the EU apart: Iain Martin, the Times
By failing to construct the eurozone so that it can help its weakest members, leaders have put the whole union at risk
Sinclair McKay’s compelling new history Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness maps out how the city, a crucible of European civilisation, was subjected in February 1945 to the terror tactics of intensive Allied bombing. In the firestorm that reduced “Florence on the Elbe” to ashes, at least 25,000 civilians were killed in a matter of hours.
I mention Dresden not just because McKay’s book provides perspective during this crisis, but because it is important to remember that such appalling destruction was inflicted on a European city within living memory.
The noble idea that such things should never be allowed to happen again in Europe was a foundation stone in the postwar rebuilding that gave birth to the EU. After 1945, Dresden was unlucky again because it ended up behind the Iron Curtain. But those who lived in West Germany, and in nations across most of the rest of western Europe, were fortunate. Underpinned by the guarantee of American and Nato defence, war was replaced with trade, co-operation and travel.
This recovery was the valuable inheritance of Europe’s democracies at the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. Contemplating the squabbling and infighting that has taken place in the EU amid this pandemic, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the last couple of generations of European leaders have scandalously squandered that postwar inheritance.
By constructing and then refusing to fix the eurozone they have created the circumstances in which the EU itself could be blown apart by the coronavirus crisis. The electorates of Europe risk being exposed to a terrifying political and social crisis between the recurring peaks of the pandemic.
Britain of course has nothing to boast about. We are negotiating our way through this peak without a prime minister and there are questions piling up for a future inquiry. Our own currency is being tested as we try to print our way out of another emergency.
Yet anyone who thinks that Britain’s problems in the crisis would have been alleviated, or even improved at the margins, by officials sitting in on a few more EU conference calls should read the latest account on the pro-Brussels website Politico of what has been going on at the highest levels of the EU. In excruciating detail it recounts months of inaction and confusion, when nation states turned inward and the EU bureaucracy issued press releases promising action on procurement that has delivered very little.
My fellow Eurosceptics should not glory in the EU’s problems for a second. A European meltdown will be extremely disruptive for all concerned, Britain included. The lives and jobs of our neighbours are at stake.
Against that backdrop, European finance ministers and leaders have spent the week arguing over desperate pleas from countries such as Italy, hit hard through no fault of its own, who want the European Central Bank and the EU to underpin common debt that will cover the epic bills being faced by national governments. Even the €540 billion rescue deal patched together late last night is unlikely to be enough. The fiscally conservative northern nations see no reason why they should take on the “pooled” debt of weaker southern European economies. The gridlock has infuriated the French, to such an extent that President Macron’s government is making threatening noises about splitting the euro in two, with a coalition of nations in the south creating their own joint pools of debt.
The core problem is what it has always been: the elementary design flaw of the euro. Currency blocs that work depend on that notion of common endeavour and “pooling” debt and risk, and ideally must function as one political organisation. A currency is more than a medium of exchange. It is also the mechanism by which a state issues debt, enabling it to share with the poorer parts of the nation when necessary. To function properly, and prevent there being an existential fight every time there is an emergency or a downturn, the euro needed an institutional structure that would operate roughly as the United States does.
Germany would not allow it. It wants the national advantages of the euro, the competitive advantages for itself, but it does not want the EU to operate like a country that treats Italy as though it is exactly equivalent to a poorer part of eastern Germany. As cover, the northern European establishment is skilled in burbling idealistic pro-European waffle, sometimes invoking the tragic events of the mid-20th century.
This organised hypocrisy looks untenable if the economic crisis continues for much longer. It threatens the already dysfunctional European banking system of which Germany is a key part, because if countries and corporates fail, then banks everywhere will not be
far behind.
This escalating economic emergency is a tragedy for the peoples of Europe. But their leaders created a madcap creation, a currency and monetary and fiscal construction that is not capable of swiftly transferring resources to the weak in the worst crisis since the Second World War. They put their faith in an organisation that is committed to the idea of ever-closer union but is incapable of meaningfully helping its members when a once-in-a-century pandemic stalks the continent.
*A terrible book, by the way. Don't be tempted to buy it, unless you're a very religious Protestant.
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