Weekend Reading – The Pain in Spain is too Big to be Contained

Depression.  

Not the Economy (yet) but how I feel so far in my weekend reading.  Even John Mauldin had to go against his wishes to ignore Spain this week now echos my thoughts on the subject in an excellent overview of the situation.  Russ Winter has s similar view in "Bernanke and Germany Wake up to a Merda Storm" and Mish discusses Spain's emergency ban on cash transactions exceeding 2,500 Euros in an effort to clamp down on tax evaders and stop the rapid flow of money out of the country as well as the massive jump in Bank of Spain borrowing from the ECB.   

Spain (#12 Economy in the World) has gotten so bad, so fast that it has made us forget Italy (#8) and we're all ignoring France (#5), which is about to have its third revolution in just over 200 years as Socialist Francois Hollande is leading in the polls by 2.5% ahead of next weekend's election.  

That's right, in France they hold elections on weekends because they actually WANT their people to participate in the Democratic process – how quaint!  

This is just the first round that eliminates the also-rans – the major election is Sunday, May 6th.  By the way, the #3 contender, with 14% of the vote, is Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front Party, who advocates Nationalization of Banks as well as clamping down on the "Muslim Problem," although it should be noted that the far right of France would still be considered the Left by Fox news and the GOP.

IN PROGRESS