{"id":22910,"date":"2009-02-03T10:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/blog\/?p=405"},"modified":"2009-02-03T10:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T10:51:00","slug":"do-not-disturbios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/do-not-disturbios\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Not \u00abDisturb\u00bb."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Many people believe it is a macabre exaggeration to suggest that in Spain, as in other European countries, more or less widespread street unrest could be seen in the coming years or even months. Some cannot even bear to hear about it, even though they do not consider it an exaggeration. They simply prefer to continue looking \u2013 albeit from a great distance now \u2013 towards the longed-for Disneyland<\/a> in which we were living until a year or two ago. Some are only just beginning to feel the effects of the recession in its many forms first-hand (on their household finances): unemployment, falling property values, losses on financial investments, business losses, payment defaults, a drastic drop in household income, etc.<\/div>\n
In economics, the future is rarely as predictable as it is today, and even less so when we try to guess what will happen on a global scale. This time, it\u2019s very straightforward. Unemployment will continue to rise in 2009 and beyond. Households will have less income and fewer resources. People will work longer hours for less pay \u2013 and that\u2019s if they\u2019re lucky. The so-called middle class will return to the very place from which it emerged: the lower-middle or working class, with its harsh hardships and meagre prospects for progress. Just like in the old days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The other day I was talking to a businessman about this bleak social future, and he said to me: \u00abIn Spain, we\u2019re not going to learn our lesson; the middle class will weather the storm and carry on with its reckless habits of producing little and getting heavily into debt.\u00bb <\/span>But I suppose not. That inertia, ingrained in the virtual welfare state, is going to be corrected the hard way.<\/span> Not only will the social crisis last for one or two years, but we will not be able to survive without radically changing our way of life through many, many casualties<\/span>. And when we say casualties<\/span> We are talking about companies that vanish off the map, fortunes that are wiped out, and modest household incomes that are literally left out on the street. And what will happen to these millions of people who are left without any means of support? It is not hard to guess, provided we do not bury our heads in the sand. The former middle and lower-middle classes, whose unemployment benefits are about to run out with no prospect of securing any other income, will have no choice but to turn to crime, emigrate (where to?) and, at the same time, protest and make their discontent known. At first, this will take the form of more or less organised demonstrations and strikes of all kinds, but after a few months, this social emergency affecting millions of people will lead to street riots and a breakdown in public safety. Common sense tells us that the immediate future lying ahead of us cannot be any different, even though we are inclined to look the other way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The venue will be a <\/span>unimaginable hell<\/span> for the generation of young people who bought and owned everything, thanks to credit and their ancestors\u2019 savings<\/span>. <\/span>But that will be his subjective view, and in reality we are heading towards a scenario that is all too familiar in Central and South American countries \u2013 in other words, neither hell in the strict sense nor unimaginable. South American society has existed for many decades with virtually no middle class, comprising a small, affluent minority and a poor majority who struggle to get by and make a living (not a life of luxury) as best they can. And let\u2019s not even mention African society, which doesn\u2019t even attain the status of society<\/span>. In the East, too, we can find examples of societies facing difficulties that are a far cry from the Western welfare state we are familiar with. But it is perhaps easier to extrapolate our imminent future by looking at our Latin American counterpart.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Generally speaking, public safety in these South American countries leaves a great deal to be desired. And it cannot be otherwise in countries where the majority of the population lives in precarious conditions. We can improve and soften the image we have of these countries as we see fit before comparing it with what we anticipate will happen in Spain. We might think that our precarious situation will stop halfway towards the current situation in any South American country, or that recovery will come even before we reach that halfway point. But this is the direction we have taken, and no other.<\/p>\n

I suppose some of you will say it\u2019s an exaggeration to talk of riots in Spain, but the unrest that has started in Greece and France will undoubtedly reach our streets. It\u2019s only a matter of time. There are currently more than 1,000,000 families in Spain in which all members are unemployed, whether they are receiving benefits or not<\/span>. And we are only seeing the tip of a growing iceberg that is still being fuelled by public subsidies. \"\"<\/a>A macabre countdown to waking up from a dream into which many were already born.<\/span> This means they are unaware of any other way of life, and that the shock will be far more traumatic. These generations will try in vain to revolutionise the world (through unrest) in pursuit of a once-in-a-lifetime dream, with no other point of reference for what the world of the 20th century was like before these young people were born. This generation will soon begin to ask itself: Is there life beyond credit? And the answer is \u2018Yes, but it\u2019s much worse, my dear friends\u2019<\/span>. Welcome to the real world, No more blue pills<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The shock caused by this recession amongst young people of the \u2018credit generation\u2019 does nothing to improve the prospects or the timing for a global recovery; quite the contrary. And the effects of this scenario on middle- and high-income households are becoming increasingly evident day by day if we analyse the situation honestly and rigorously calculation of changes in net worth<\/a> in the past, present and future.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mucha gente cree que es una exageraci\u00f3n macabra hablar de que en Espa\u00f1a, como en otros pa\u00edses de Europa, puedan verse disturbios callejeros m\u00e1s o menos generalizados en los pr\u00f3ximos a\u00f1os o incluso meses. Algunos ni siquiera soportan oir hablar de ello a pesar de que no lo consideren exagerado. Simplemente prefieren seguir mirando, aunque […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categorizar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clusterfamilyoffice.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}