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Spain rearranges furniture as economy sinks
Tue May 26, 2009 9:24pm EDT
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By Paul Day
MADRID (Reuters) - Moving a 17-meter (55.76 feet) high monument to Christopher Columbus 100 meters down the road is how the Spanish government is interpreting the advice of John Maynard Keynes.
The economist once argued it would be preferable to pay workers to dig holes in the ground, and fill them in again, rather than allowing them to stand idle and deprive the economy of the multiplier effect of their wages.
So Spain's government is paying for the return of the concrete-based monument, topped by a three-meter marble statue of the Italian explorer, to a roundabout in the middle of Madrid's Plaza Colon -- exactly where it had stood for almost 100 years until 1973.
Plan E (Spanish Plan for Economic Stimulus and Employment) is part of Spain's equivalent to the "New Deal" U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt devised in response to The Great Depression, a plan partly drawn up by Keynes himself.
Moving the Columbus monument will take 65 workers until the end of the year. For them, the project gives Spain a little time to find a longer-term solution to unemployment that is rising faster than in any other European Union country.
"What will they do once the monument has been moved?" said one worker, surveying the chaos in the central Madrid plaza amid preparations for the move and another Plan E project, construction of a new underground car park.
"Well, I guess they'll have to hope for a Plan F, then a Plan G," he said, on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The Socialist government has been enthusiastically Keynesian in its response to the steep downturn: many of Madrid's major streets are now a labyrinth of roadworks, negotiated only with difficulty by pedestrians and traffic.
But the scheme shows taxpayers and lenders subsidizing a job creation plan in the absence of a deeper overhaul of an outdated jobs market, as unions threaten a general strike if workers' rights are tampered with.
The stop-gap public works plan highlights Spain's need to find new sources of jobs and growth after the global crisis snuffed out its decade-long residential construction boom.
WASTED OPPORTUNITY?
The government says stimulus spending has begun to contain jobless numbers, which rose by more than 39,000 people in April after monthly increases above 100,000 since late 2008.
The European Commission says unemployment is heading for 20.5 percent in 2010 after the end of the construction spree. At its 2007 peak, that saw Spain build and finance more homes than Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom combined.
Spain's 8 billion euro ($10.91 billion) public works scheme will give around 400,000 people work, albeit temporarily, and kick-start the economy with 30,000 projects from shuffling the street furniture in Madrid to laying bicycle paths in Galicia.
The company charged with the Columbus work is blue-chip constructor OHL, which declined to comment on the project, but the site worker said the company had won the contract on condition it employ out-of-work builders. Continued...
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