According to the country’s National Statistics Institute a record high figure of 17.4 per cent were unemployed in the first quarter of the year.

Unemployment leapt from 13.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008, the biggest quarterly jump since 1976. Joblessness in Spain has almost doubled in a year.
…
Dominic Bryant, an economist with BNP Paribas, said: “The momentum is clearly there for something well above 20 per cent, it’s odds on, really. My forecast is that it gets to something around about 23 per cent.”

Now that’s depression dancin. And if there’s any chance that Spain reports unemployment like the good ‘ol US of A, they’re really fucked with 17.4% unemployment and then probably another quarter of the nation underemployed or no longer seeking work. That would be just f’n crazy sauce but considering how vicious their property bubble was (they were a little late to the game so they poured on the building with a vengeance).

And here’s a bit on how GDP is reported in the US and abroad, and how fucked Britain is in the way we report GDP.

In the U.S. the headline GDP number is the real (inflation adjusted) quarterly change, seasonally adjusted at an annual rate (SAAR). In Britain and the EU, the headline GDP number is the real quarterly change, but it is not the annual rate. So a 1.9% decline in the U.K. is about the same as a 7.6% decline (SAAR) in the U.S. Ouch!

Tags: depression 2.0, no really we're really fucking fucked this time

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 10:15.