Well, there is not a permanent unemployment rate. It is situated in 9%,and each year it lowers a .5% at least. It is higher than the USA, but lower than many developed countries.

Besides, in every country it exists a number of people who work, but do not declare it, and are listed as unemployed. In Spain, this is an institution.

Why do you think we are receiving hundreds of thousands inmigrants each year and the spanish do not complain? Because there is work for all of us. That supposed 9% unemployment rate is actually more close to the 5% frictional unemployment rate in the USA ( It is people who recycle themselves at the University, an academy, or take a rest between one and other work).

The fact that we are exporting qualified personnel outside our borders is due to the fact that here public University is very cheap (about 500 to 1000 $ a year if you are studying in your home town, and live at home), and the level acquired reasonable/good. But this is a plus for anybody who wonders where to invest.

Besides, salaries are very low in many of the qualified positions, so, they are very competitive.

Can you mention non-stable franco-german investments here?

Well, there is i.e. Carrefour, a chain of malls (more or less), but they are not leaving, since they make their bussiness here (sell). There is the Volkswagen make SEAT, which used to be a purely spanih make, but, if they left, somebody would buy it, as done in the past, because in the automobile industry productivity we are #1 in Europe, and it would be much easier to close plants somewhere else.

Although there are subsidies from the EC, these ones compensate the fact that many of our industries were strongly hitten or disappeared with our joining the EC, and they were negotiated in that treaty and the following, they are not free gifts, nor can they easily removed. They will be negotiated again.

There is a lot of confusion about the future of aging population. What pays for the retirement is not the children you have (may be in an old-fashioned farmers society), but the invested capital. If we (I do) put apart some money for our retirement plans, why do we have to fear about population? My plan will invest it in China, Latin America or wherever, and give me money generated with the profits that the firms which work in those population growing countries generate.

As for the AFTA, I would be very surprised if the stronger economies of South America (Argentina & Brasil) join, and doubt that the rest do it. NObody knows what could happen to their industries if overwhelmed by a bombing of more competitive North American products.

Tere is an agreement of Free Trade between the EC and Mexico, and some smaller ones with the Mercosur, that may de developed further ahead if necessary.