“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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Time for another Sunday Sermon, otherwise known as a rant!
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First it was Cyprus where the bankrupt government tried to steal money right out of people’s bank accounts. If you want to read that again click here and here.)
Then it was the turn of the greedy bureaucrats in Australia who decided to tax pensions TWICE, once when you put the money in and again when you tried to take it out! (For the original post click here.)
Now in bankrupt Spain the politicians are at it, however, this time they aren’t proposing to steal some of the money in your bank account – oh no, this time they want to steal your entire home!
Yes, you read it right, the Spanish government has announced this past week that they want to seize homes that have been foreclosed on by banks and developers.
Not that I have any sympathy with the banksters, not by a long chalk! But theft is theft, and theft by governments is perhaps the most evil of all simply because the victims have little or no remedies available – other than pack up and go somewhere else.
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As usual the politicians and bureaucrats are trying to dress this theft up as something helpful. They say they will rent the confiscated foreclosed homes to Spanish families who will be allowed to live there rent-free for up to three years.
Sounds great, but as usual what these political morons have failed to do is think their policy through.
If they go ahead with this plan to steal homes the consequences will not be what they think.
First of all it will destroy what is left of the mortgage market in Spain because no one will want to make home loans on Spanish real estate if there is no viable foreclosure mechanism should things go wrong for the mortgagee.
Second, it will go a long way to killing off the buy-to-let sector, which is the thing that has been keeping the real estate market afloat in these financially strained times. Home sales, not just in Spain, but in many countries have been boosted considerably by cash rich investors picking up what they consider to be ‘bargain’ properties at a level that yields a decent return on their capital. Where will they get that return if the government kills the rental sector by renting out homes for free?
And third, it will also kill off the recent Spanish drive to attract foreign investors by offering residency to anyone who spends around $200,000 buying up the glut of Spanish property currently on its real estate market.
If these things were happening in Zimbabwe or even Venezuela everyone would be calling it a disgrace. But it is happening in Europe and Australia and America. And it will get worse the more desperate the politicians and the bureaucrats become as they make the mess they created worse, not better.
Who on earth put idiots like these in charge?
It wasn’t you was it?
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fasab 
The whole attempted “support of the Euro” has been a perfect lesson in how NOT to run fiscal policy. Then again, when you try to link strong economies like Germany (and to a lesser degree, France) to weak economies like Greece and Italy, it’s rather like selling a person a Mercedes S-class, then also giving them a free Yugo that they have to keep in perfect condition to keep the Benz. No matter how strong the “locomotive” economy of Germany, there are too many “boxcars with brakes on” (pretty much all of southern Europe) to haul through a recession. And the LAST thing you should do is go nuts with austerity while your national unemployment rates are topping 27%, with over 50 % youth unemployment (fast reaching 67% – yes, 2 out of 3) in Greece and Spain.
But what the heck do I know? I just adjusted my lifestyle to my new lower income. Guess I should’ve threatened to go under, then asked Brussels to keep me afloat, no? 😉
The whole EU thing was always a bad idea, except fot the bureaucrats and politicians who build their petty empires within it’s facade.
And both Europe and America should have let the big banks go bust, we’d all be a lot better off if they had!
The beasts must be fed.
Time they were put on a diet I think!