Monday’s US charts (especially) for Spain’s labour union leaders

By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | While some Spanish labour union leaders attend press conferences dressed up in expensive Rolex watches, employment numbers increase somewhere else: in the US, as this graphics show and economist Tim Duy explains in his post.

Hiring activity in the US raises 245,000 new jobs since last December. It always is inconvenient and very imperfect to compare different national labour markets and I know better. Yet, in the US, we would be met with a monetary policy that one may describe as expansive, and a free labour market in which wages are flexible without the burden of complex decrees and laws.

Then, they have a sort of natural protection against external competitiveness or a depreciated dollar. Or let us just say that the currency can adjust to what the markets need.

Of course, the debate about whether fiscal adjustments or printing money will win the last hand in the recovery race will go on. Both sides of the argument keep an eye on each other (check this comment by economist Marcus Nunes on Tim Duy’s remarks) and the discussion is interesting, indeed.

Nevertheless, Rolex-decorated wrists announcing threats of general strikes, with support from a Socialist Party rotten by party-politics instead of working for the public interest, offers a very parochial picture of certain sectors in Spain, today. And it is not a comfortable sight, not in a country fighting its way out of this crisis.