Most Anglo-Protestant Economies (APEs, for short) do not pass the idealized Weberian test of financial probity and capitalist accountability — not even when compared with some PIGS. Let us look at the recent record and compare some APEs and other up-and-coming animals with one of the PIGS: Spain.
According to the storyline about PIGS, now repeated ad nauseam by the media in APEland, Spain is a “peripheral” and topical “Mediterranean” country with a highly indebted economy and a wobbly banking sector, is over-dependent on bricks and mortar and is scarcely competitive in a world destined to be dominated by APEs and those emerging new kids on the block: The BRICs and the NEXT (to use Goldman Sachs’ terminology).
In short, Spain is a PIG and a “true sinner” (as a contributor to the Deutschland edition of the Financial Times recently said) if there was ever one.
ell, really? Let us debunk some of the underlying Weberian myths about who is an accountable capitalist and related charges.
First, is Spain “peripheral”? This epithet is used by many analysts and the media in APEland to avoid the pejorative term PIGS. Apparently, they have just realized that some people could be slightly offended by their puerile puns.
But let us not be fooled. They are referring to the same countries, although by another name but with the same derogatory intent. Only that in this case the emphasis is put on the small relative size and declining impact of the PIGS on the European and global scale of things.
For them, the easy and tempting headline would say something like: “Pigmy PIGS are doomed, the future belongs to the giant BRICs (plus those serious, prudent and squeaky clean APEs, of course).” It was a catchy headline, was it not? But there is a snag: Some of the — presumably — tiny PIGS are bigger than some big BRICs — and, as it happens, more serious than some APEs.
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