Free Republic

The Great Orient of France and Zapatero by Cesar Vidal. November 19th, 2008 Last Friday, I read an editorial in La Linterna [the Lantern] that brought about an extraordinary commotion up to the point of which it has been a true multitude the one that has requested this text. I reproduce it next. It was the year 1801, when in the French port of Brest the first Masonic lodge participated by Spaniards was constituted. Its name was La Reunión Española, and we know that it had 26 members, among them some priests. The goal of the lodge was obvious. Napoleon...

The microphones betray again the president Lara, to Zapatero: “Don’t Burn You Out with These Issues”The open microphones have betrayed Zapatero again. In an episode that remembers the "tensión" on which Gabilondo spoke in the heat of the campaign, [see also this] the president clarified why he helps talking about crisis. "If you instil much pessimism, if you do not say anything positive, it is worse", the president told his host, Jose Manuel Lara, before giving his lecture in the Circle of Economy. The [media] businessman advised him “not to burn him out" with those subjects. The result of adress:...

The Problem of my Beloved Basque Land by Ernest Lluch September 19th, 2000 The first action of ETA with a death as result has always been considered significant since it has been tried to associate it to a political meaning, a transcendental liturgy and epic. If we asked on which it was the first, some will answer that the shoot by Txabi Etxebarrieta, who I knew when he was an active student of Business, against the Civil Guard Pardines, which occurred on June 7th, 1968. A death that was corresponded with the one of its perpetrator. Others will affirm that...

The European Central Bank has effectively funded new lending in Spain in recent months, replacing banks’ use of wholesale capital markets, which have been strangled by the global credit crunch. Spanish banks doubled their share of the ECB’s weekly funding auctions in the final quarter of last year, taking their borrowing up to €44bn in December from a running average of about €20bn over the previous 15 months, according to the most recent data from the Bank of Spain. This extra lending from the ECB of almost €24bn outstrips the quarterly amounts raised previously by Spanish banks from securitisation markets,...

Why Kerviel is so unsettling By Christopher Caldwell Published: February 8 2008 18:27 | Last updated: February 8 2008 18:27 “You lose a sense of the amounts when you’re doing this kind of job,” the rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel told Agence France-Presse this week. “Everything gets dematerialised. You can get carried away.” It is possible Mr Kerviel was just using the interview to set up his legal defence. French authorities have accused him, after all, of forgery and breach of trust. Mr Kerviel had risen from the back office at Société Générale to become a “warrant arbitragist”. His job was...

Heads are likely to roll high in the French financial establishment after it emerged yesterday that President Sarkozy was kept in the dark for three days over the €5 billion (£3.7 billion) fraud by a rogue trader at the Société Générale bank. The wrath of the President, who was apparently told only on Wednesday of trouble at SocGen, added to widespread suspicion that France’s second bank and the Banque de France were too eager to blame Jérôme Kerviel, the solitary trader. As well as Daniel Bouton, SocGen’s chief executive, Christian Noyer, the governor of the central bank, is among those...