One of the underreported stories from last week was the implicit announcement by the official statistical agency of the European Union - Eurostat - that Spanish budget (and who knows what other) data is now just one big lie. Last Tuesday Bloomberg reported [5]: "European Union officials made an extraordinary visit to Spain in September that signals escalating concern about the reliability of the country’s budget data. EU statisticians ordered a so-called ad-hoc visit, a procedure reserved for urgent issues, to assess whether regional officials are complying with recommendations after failing to report all the unpaid bills they had accumulated in 2011, Tim Allen, a Luxembourg-based press officer for the statistics agency Eurostat, said in an e-mail. Eurostat raised concerns about Spanish data in April following at least two “upstream dialog visits,” the second of four levels of checks the agency has on member states’ statistical reporting."
The report continues [5]:
September’s visit signaled a shift in gear to the second-most serious intervention. Ad-hoc visits are triggered by urgent issues regarding the quality or the methods used to produce the data, which only can be resolved with a face-to-face meeting, according to the agency Web site.
Local and regional administrations in Spain need to make “substantial improvements to public accounting and statistical reporting,” the agency said in its April 30 report. “Eurostat notes the lack of initiative and preparedness to follow up the recommendations.”
The damning report by the Eurostat can be found at the following link [6]. Or rather could because as of moments ago one is greeted with the following 404 screen:
What happened? Something that would make Goebbels giddy with pride.
Eurostat, BBG reports again, the European Union’s statistics agency, withdrew a report criticizing Spain’s processes for reporting budget data after consultations with the country’s government, Eurostat spokesman Tim Allen says by e- mail.
"Further exchanges with the Spanish authorities have shown that a few statements in the report were too general," Allen says. "The report has been temporarily withdrawn for amendment."
Too general as in not "everything" is made up, just this, this and this? Laughable.
At least we got yet another glimpse of how that sinking economic titanic, the Eurozone, deals with the truth: by withdrawing it for "amendments." Because one can't have something, anything, casting doubt on the Spanish "miracle recovery" - after all, the last thing the hedge fund "greater fool" scramble into Spain needs is even the faintest glimpse of not only how bad it is, but that when one strips away the endless lies, it has never been worse.