Spanish banks downgraded

At last the Spanish banks have all been hit by Moody's, and all had their rating's downgraded - well, 30 of them have.

All I can say is, I'm surprised it has taken this long

I have been saying for years that the flabby system of too many branches, staffed and with hardly any customers, living off the fat of the property boom, has been a growing problem.

Take La Cala de Mijas in Malaga. It's a pretty small place, yet it is stuffed with bank branches. At one point they had 2 Solbanks and an Atlantico - in the same group.

All the managers I dealt with just didn't see that there are too many banks and too many branches

Now there is going to have to be some serious bloodshed as mergers and takeovers will happen, and hundreds of branches will have to close

There needs to be serious reform in terms of the way the banks operate, the red tape, the stupid taxes, the ridiculous mortgage expenses etc etc etc

Spain has always seemed to be some years behind the US and UK. Now it is danger of regressing further

Thanks for reading