Luis Maria Linde, ECB President Mario Draghi and President of the Spanish Parliament Jesus PosadaSpain cooked its own goose last year when it elected a uber-corrupt right-wing government lead by crooked wing-nut Mariano Rajoy. The Bank of Spain's brand new crackpot right-wing Governor, Luis Maria Linde, is urging that government, enmeshed in endless corruption scandals and an Austerity economy cascading out of control, to sell two nationalized banks (Catalunya Banc and NCG Banco), quickly raise the retirement age and scrap the minimum wage. Nothing about executing banksters and confiscating all their stolen loot. Linde calls his "reform" temporary but, of course, ending the minimum wage has been a goal of right-wingers since before it was ever adopted. He claims it will help end unemployment and give the labor market flexibility. Not a peep about the ultimate goal: slavery.
“It would be worth exploring the possibility of establishing new formulas that would allow, in special cases, temporary departures from the conditions laid down in collective bargaining agreements, or exceptional mechanisms to prevent the minimum wage from acting as a constraint on specific groups of workers with most difficulties in terms of employability,” he said in the report. Spain’s minimum wage is currently set at €645 a month with a record 6.2 million people out of work. The national unemployment rate has hit 27.2% while Andalucia has been named as the second hardest place to find a job in Europe with 34.6% of the population without work. Nationally, youth unemployment has reached a record 57.2%. Linde also suggested making reforms to the state pension by increasing the retirement age and changing how pensions are calculated. The report, which calls for the official age of retirement to increase from 65 to 67, recommends that calculating the amount a person receives should be based on contributions made in the last 25 years of working life rather than the last 15.