Spanish Retail Sales Tumble

Article written by Prieur du Plessis, editor of the Investment Postcards from Cape Town blog.This post is a guest contribution by Rebecca Wilder, author of the News N Economics blog.

In a seriously misguided effort to balance its budget, In early September Spain Passed Largest VAT Hike In History. I wrote at the time, "Stunning Ineptitude Will Make History Books". Spain's unemployment rate is over 25% and the youth unemployment rate is near 53% yet the fools in the Spanish government hiked taxes yet again, this time by the largest amount in history.

Spanish retail sales fell 9.8 percent in April over the previous month, the biggest monthly drop since the statistical series began in 2003, the national statistics institute said Tuesday.Retail sales fell 3.8 percent in March as Spain, which is struggling with an unemployment rate of 24.4 percent, fell back into recession in the first quarter.The retail sales figure for April was down 11.3 percent from the same month last year, compared with a 4.0 percent annual drop in March, the statistics institute said in a statement.

The word of the day is plunge. Retail sales fell like a rock in Germany and fell at a record pace in France. Jobs and retail sales plunged at a record pace in Italy, and in general, did a nose-dive across the entire Eurozone German Retail Sales Plunge Into Contraction Please Consider the Markit Germany Retail PMI® Report. Fastest drop in retail sales since April 2010 as year-and-a-half run of growth comes to an end.

THIS is what insolvency looks like:Greece's budget deficit in 2010 was 10.5% of gross domestic product, significantly larger than forecast by either the Greek government or the European Union authorities, Eurostat, the EU's official statistics agency, said Tuesday.

A subtle, but important from policy and business strategy perspective paper from the Banca d'Italia, Working Paper No. 908, titled "Asking income and consumption questions in the same survey: what are the risks?" (April 2013) by Giulia Cifaldi and Andrea Neri.The issue at hand is of relevance to: