Spain’s in trouble - but the outlook for the UK is far worse

Britain’s not the only place feeling the squeeze, as Spain suffers from the end of its housing boom. But anyone who thinks that Spain is in trouble should be far more worried about the UK.

I've mentioned more than a few times here that unemployment is a lagging indicator.

What that means is, that things get bad in the economy, and then the jobless figures start to rise, not the other way about. So anyone arguing that we can't have a recession or a house price crash because employment is high, is simply wrong.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.