What's Spanish for the next domino?
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 @ 11:31 AM
Eurozone leaders have spent the last couple of weeks telling the world’s media that ‘there’s nothing to see here. Please move along’. Which, given how dry and difficult to explain this subject has become, we would all love to. The trouble is that everytime it looks as if one fire has been damped down, another flares up.
This time it is Spain which seems to be heading rapidly down a road first travelled by Greece a couple of years ago. To show that I’m not exaggerating, I give you this figure: in the last two years Greece has had to cut its national budget by 4.7%, and we all know what that has done for the economy and for unemployment. Spain is now under orders from the European Commission to cut its budget by even more, 5.5% in the next two years, and before it even starts that process unemployment in Spain is already higher than in Greece.
You don’t have to be Nostradamus to think that there may be trouble ahead. Nor Cassandra, for that matter. A general strike called by Spanish unions for March 29th may be just the first of many battles this year as the newly elected Government of Mariano Rajoy tries to impose savage cuts on an economy that is already deep in recession.
Read more at itv.com