G20 / Olympic bubble

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has given the Games to the First World (Tokyo), at the expense of the emerging countries (no continuity with Brazil 2016 and Turkey 2020), while discarding a country in decline, Spain (jobless rate of 26 percent, characteristic of the Great Depression). The IOC, like the markets, is averse to risk. The result seems premonitory of a global trend: the central countries are in their best economic position in years, growth is slowing in emerging countries, and the south of Europe remains prostrate.

The leaders of the three contending countries, Abe, Erdogan and Rajoy, made the same journey to Buenos Aires from St Petersburg, where they had just attended a summit of the G20, the eighth since that institution took shape in 2008 as a collective pilot for world economic recovery at a time when anything (even global collapse) seemed possible in the world economy. Rajoy arrived brimming with optimism in the Argentinean capital after remarking that at the previous G20 (Mexico, June 2012) there had been discussion of a possible bailout for Spain (which finally happened in the financial sector, with severe social consequences deriving from economic demands). And now, 15 months later, "Spain is not news at the G20 for any such reason."

What Spain is notoriously in the news for is its rate of unemployment. At the G20 it vied for first place in that negative ranking only with South Africa. Meanwhile all the forecasts, including the government's most optimistic, mention no solutions, or solutions only in the very long term, to the problem of unemployment - the issue that really sets the Spanish economy apart from neighboring countries. Countries with which, a few years ago (before 2007), we seemed to be in a process of convergence. In remarks made by Economy Minister Luis de Guindos (who is the most realistic, the least tifossi of our economic ministers) on the radio program Hoy por hoy, the word most repeated was "stabilization." Stabilization of unemployment, of consumption. Not a word about recovery.

The great failure of the G20 is its absence of recipes in terms of political will to attack the problem of unemployment in the world:

The great failure of the G20 is its absence of recipes in terms of political will to attack the problem of unemployment in the world: more than 200 million people jobless, 30 million of whom have been generated during the present economic crisis; 80 million jobless young people under 25; 1.2 billion people, some 40 percent of the global workforce, who are considered vulnerable in terms of the conditions they work in, or the scanty pay they receive. To generate those 30 million jobs lost in the last six years, plus the 170 million that had already disappeared before the Great Recession, plus more millions of jobs for young people who every year join the workforce, or even to create or bolster systems of protection for those who cannot find a place in the productive system, ought to be among the political priorities of the G20: that is, the proposal to make employment one of the central objectives of all governments, multilateral organizations and central banks.

But this is nobody's political will. St Petersburg produced only statements, not commitments. If we look over the G20's initial document in 2008, economic growth, employment and reduction of poverty figure only collaterally among the priorities, while the concept of inequality does not even merit a mention. Efforts are to be focused on "supplying liquidity, strengthening the capital of financial institutions, protecting savings and deposits, correcting regulatory deficiencies, thawing out the credit markets..." Now, as we enter the seventh year of crisis, is it not time for these leaders to take a look at the real economy as well, so as not to be trapped in their own words, and do something to recover the credibility of politics among the public?