Photos uploaded

Finally, an upload to Picasa:

https://picasaweb.google.com/110696413035939209828/CaminoDeSantiago02?authkey=Gv1sRgCLCZlKT2nL3JSQ

More on European Debt Troubles

I'm back.

Spending 5 mos. on a European vacation must sound exotic. It is. But it's hard also. It takes a while to get back in the groove; to remember what you have in the closet, to remember where to find the flush lever on the toilet. To pick up where you left off.

I've been watching the wheels come off the European economy and it's like watching a train wreck. I don't want to look, but just can't take my eyes off of it.

I've written about how the northern complaint of “profligate southerners” being responsible for the problems is off the mark. How southern countries started from a less advantaged position and invested as they did to catch up. To become more competitive. And why that's been to the advantage of the northern countries and why they are still in an advantaged position. I may come back to that again.

To summarize: Spain relied too heavily on construction, Italy's small and medium sized businesses have been hammered by globalization, and Portugal never really got the ground before their markets disappeared in recession.

The problem right now has many dimensions. NY University Professor Nouriel Roubini hits the nail on the head twice in two pieces from last month here and here. That last in which he refers more particularly to Italy and to the problems as being of “stocks and flows”. Stocks being the level of accrued debt and flows being the financial direction and need for that borrowing. There are, or were, we may be past that now, a number of solutions to the stocks. But the best ones required the European Central Bank (ECB) to “print”. German intransigence, a cultural and inborn stubbornness, bullheadedness, and their refusal to countenance anything outside their established belief system makes that impossible. Verboten. And I know from whence I speak. More than once I've had lucrative deals fall through for less than Merkel's ridiculous insistence that Greek PM Papademos to sign a personal letter stating that he will pay her money back.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's finance minister, wants every country in the EU to set up “redemption funds” to pay down their debt in excess of 60% of GDP. That's dumb. The issue today is to roll over existing debt, the stocks, at affordable rates. Paying them down can't come until the flows are reversed. And that's going to take a long time. It requires restructuring industries. In the case of Spain moving away from the dependence on construction. In the case of Italy finding new markets for their specialized goods. And Portugal, general recovery of demand in global markets.

And please don't think I'm just going off on Germans. It serves them in other ways, at other times, and it's partly responsible for their success, but it's not the time for that now. We all thought the harmonized market was going to work. It's only the Germans that can't see and respond to the problems now.

So, in addition to the problem of stocks and flows is the political problem. Merkel wants new treaties to give teeth to enforcing borrowing limits. No time for that now. Spain has a new government. Italy has a new government (acceptable to Germans). Greece has a new government. Belgium has a new government, finally. France will have one....

Private money is already out of this market (at affordable rates). Even the Germans can't sell a bond. The risk is that the panic infects the euro itself. It's no longer a negligible probability.

Update: This from Barry Ritholtz' blog which is along the same line of thinking and better stated.

Http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/the-euro-debate-gets-philosophical/

Drive - In

Spanish version es.1


A Citroën (French)


A Peugeot (also French)


A Renault Dauphin - (French too and the reason the French still can't sell cars in the US).





Many Seat 600's (600cc, I burned the valves out of one of these one weekend - who knew they made cars that wouldn't do 55mph forever - and yes, I've owned bigger motorcycles).


This one is cute with it's racing lights.

Rejoneo

They talked me into it. Rejoneo is when the bull is fought on horseback.


Not my favorite. I'm more the conventional sort, but it's difficult to explain what you like about these things.

One thing of which we would agree - the Spanish don't keep no nags.

Numancia

Every culture seems to need it's own Alamo. Do those histories justify the costs of wars? Do war heroes glorify the heroes? Or war itself?

Here near Soria lies the site of the Spanish Alamo, Masada - or choose your disaster of choice. The original Iberians - there were different kinds, Celts, Basques, maybe others - were conquered by the Romans (the Basques less so, but that's a different history).

The Celtic tribes near Soria put up an especially strong resistance. The Romans themselves thought so. Or, at least having invested so much in running over these people they later thought it necessary to justify the cost by claiming such strong resistance. But the resistance was probably as strong as they claimed. By all accounts before the end of the siege the Celts were digging up their dead.

Numancia lies on top of a "teso", a hill or mount with a flat top. The flat top here measures about 8 hectares. That was the city or town; medium/big for it's time. It was walled and fortified. The wide, fertile Duero river valley below was cultivated to feed the city. Before the days of artillery (catapults, or siege engines) such defenses were impregnable - almost. The routine maneuver to defeat such a city was to surround (invest) it with your own forts and wall those together creating your own defensive ring around the city's defenses and not let anybody either in or out. That's exactly what the Romans did. It may have taken years to bring these people to their knees. But eventually it fell and was burned. Either by the Romans, or by the Celts themselves (anticipating David Koresh).

Nobody knows for sure, but the records of the struggle are legendary and the layer of ash is definitive. Above that lie Roman ruins and higher still the monuments erected after the Carlist wars. One of for which no better place could be found than directly atop a Roman bath.

More info. from my favorite source, Wikipedia

and this video on YouTube:

Bodegas Arzuaga

The bigger they come, the harder WE fall.

Addendum (Out-takes)

Passing through one of those small towns about 50km from Santiago in what had become at that point a continuous overflow of pilgrims - I'm sure the locals thought they had to be careful not to be stepped on - we came upon this very short, very elderly woman dressed all in black walking with some difficulty and with what I would guess to be her daughter. Like us, going in the direction of Santiago. I said, "¿To Santiago?" And she said, "Of course. Wait for me there". I said I would save her a seat at the cathedral and her daughter said, "Look at how nicely they speak our language"! The inference being that anybody going to Santiago wouldn't speak Spanish.

We arrived at an albergue in La Rioja before it opened. We took off our packs and sat in the street for over an hour eating from what we could find in our packs and chatting with other pilgrims as they arrived. Finally, at the appointed opening hour a woman appeared to check us in. She lined us up; boots here, walking sticks there, have your credentials ready. She showed us our beds and as she left someone said we have arrived at the "Cuartel" - “barracks", probably, but a term largely reserved for a headquarters of the Guardia Civil. Ms. Polo said, "Si, and it has a Sargenta"! - making feminine a normally masculine noun.

Almost all of us had blisters on our feet, but we met an Italian walking on such blisters that it looked really dangerous. He had been advised to lay over until he healed up, but the next day we overtook him on the way into Logroño. We spoke to him briefly, asked how he was doing - it was obvious he wasn't doing well and he said so himself. But we went on ahead anyway thinking there wasn't much we could do. I felt so badly. Shortly after we stopped at a lagoon that was reportedly a good birding spot. It's a couple of hundred meters off the camino, but you can see quite a distance. There were 2 other Italians resting there. I told them that one of their countrymen was having difficulty and to watch for him. Later we found him again, quite by accident, in a restaurant. He had made it in on his own. He told us he had seen a doctor and that he was indeed going to lay over.

A Dutchman who was volunteering in one of the albergues as part of a mission with a religious order and who was trying to redirect his life after his wife of 35 years had left him - he had a trike (in Holland) and had made an aerodynamic shell for it. What better place to find yourself and start over? There were other examples.

A Slovenian girl, tall, very beautiful, very, very well educated; there was a conversation about something nearby that she should see and she said, "Why not? I have all the time I have." As though what ever brought her there wasn't worth going back to. Shocking, because we should suppose someone with her talent and intelligence to be very busy. There are far too many young people in Europe today with little to do.

A young Swedish girl, pierced, tattooed, smart too, not what you would think would gravitate toward old men; we had a long conversation. She was going back to nursing school and starting over too.

One of the surprises was the number of Asians we encountered. We followed a group of sometimes 3 and sometimes 4 Koreans for a few days. We would pass them on the trail as they were resting. Or, they would pass us. Then we would see them again in the evening. I had told one of them that I had done business in Seoul. I guess we eventually became familiar enough that one of the girls thought it safe to "interview" me. She asked me about the business, my experience in Korea, why we were walking the camino, whose decision it was, how far we had come? I think it's a curiosity among the young to find couples who have been together so long. It's a curiosity too to see so many interesting and smart young people.

In much the same way we kept running into a girl from the Philippines - first, someplace before Logroño. She had lived in L.A. and was presently living on Santiago de Chile. The last time we saw her - several hundred kilometers on in Hospital de Órbigo - she had joined up with 2 Englishmen. She said they enjoyed having her along because they thought she spoke Spanish (which she did quite well).

The "spiritual" Austrian girl, marathon runner, carried a pack as big as mine (not so heavy, I hope), was walking half again as far as we would in a day, played Mozart on the jukebox; we checked into an albergue dead tired and she was singing and dancing, dancing in the halls! On her toes! Everybody else's toes were wrecked. She taught us an exercise to relieve pain by touching the backs of our hand 7 times, then the other hand...I forget the whole routine. She was disappointed with other walkers for not being sufficiently spiritual. Nobody wanted to walk with her! But, she'll find herself (if she hasn't).

A retired draftsman and artist, Catalan, who had lived years in France and was volunteering in an albergue; he had walked the camino 3 times. He showed us a portfolio of drawings that he had made - some from the 1950's. We had a long discussion about modern art and the work that hangs in the Museo Reina Sophia. We talked about what we liked and didn't.

A Dutch couple with whom we shared supper several nights between Burgos and Carrión; I introduced them to Manchego cheese and the wine opener on the back of a Swiss Army knife. Americans come with everything. They shared what they had with us. We didn't have a language in common and so were never really able to have a conversation.