Escaping The PIIGS

Investors.com ^ | May 13, 2010 | Investors Business Daily staff

[Kaslin]

Leadership: This week Spain decided it wasn't going to be the next Greece. It launched tough fiscal measures, and pitched "green" programs and public union raises over the side. Seems there are some lessons here.

Spain, a latecomer to democracy and the welfare state, has agonized for years about its place on the Continent. Wanting to be a European welfare state, it imitated its neighbors. It spent like they did, but it couldn't match their productive capacity.

Instead, it found itself looking like Greece, a country with a stunted private sector and a bloated public sector. Any effort to balance the two was met by union violence in the streets.

Spain's spending binge put its deficit at 11.2% of GDP and its 2009 public debt at 50% of GDP, with credit agencies warning that it was headed for 90%. Unemployment stood near 19%. Sovereign ratings agencies downgraded the country's outlook to negative, and market analysts made Spain the "S" of the PIIGS bailout candidates alongside Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece.

Spain, it turns out, didn't intend to be the next disaster story.

Instead of blaming "an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy" as he did in February, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero came up with something new: the political will to cut back and take the political heat.

As Europe fashioned a $1 trillion bailout fund and prepared for the worst, Spain did what no one thought a socialist state could ever do: It cut public-sector workers' salaries 5% and held off their raises for 2011. Pensions were frozen for all but the poorest.

[businessprofessor]

Obama, Reid, and Pelosi please pick up the courtesy socialist phone. You need to get tough with the public employee cartel here.

[livius]

Spain was doing fine under Aznar. When ZP got the Socialists back into power, they went berserk - not only giving away the store to all of their favored constituncies (young people [in Spain, this means anybody under 50], Third World immigrants and unions), but bringing back all the restrictive employment and other policies that had been bogging Spain down for some time before that.

Actually, Felipe Gonzalez was a sort of Spanish Bill Clinton - personally corrupt, wealthy, giving things to his buds, but not too extreme. ZP is an idiot and a radical leftist, like Obama, and I think he was one of Obama’s role models. So if even ZP is admitting that things have got to change, maybe Bambi should take a closer look and stop trying to drag the US down the road to the Socialist Paradise (TM).

[highlander_UW]

I haven’t forgotten that Spain surrendered to the terrorists and responded by voting in the socialists. So now they’ve got problems because of that “choice”? Let me see....nope, can’t work up much pity.

[PDMiller]

Better still, all the big money-wasting "green" and "alternative energy" projects — which a Spanish university study exposed as job killers — were scrapped. That's right, all the global warming measures put in place because of the "emergency" were dumped.

Killing the windmills! Music to this NIMBY's ears.

[madamemayhem]

oh dear, you poor thing, it sounds like your giveadamn may be broken. don’t worry, you can get along without it. i know i do. :)

[J Aguilar]

Yes, that is right, and many people I meet just say that we have what we deserve, but take into account that Spanish people are newcomers in Democracy, with little experience, and 3/11 was a well designed black op. Just click on my name.

[highlander_UW]

Yes, that is right, and many people I meet just say that we have what we deserve, but take into account that Spanish people are newcomers in Democracy, with little experience, and 3/11 was a well designed black op. Just click on my name.

I did click your name. There are quite a few links there. I read one. To clarify, are you indicting that you think the 3/11 bombing was perpetrated by the socialists/communists under false flag where islamic terrorists were blamed?

To be honest, I expect, at some point, the same thing to happen in the US...and the Tea Party will be blamed. I've referred to it as a Reichstag event.

[J Aguilar]

No, I am proving that the official version regarding 3/11 do not explain the facts (not even identifies the explosive used or the bombers involved), that the official protocols were not followed and that evidence was hidden. Moreover, that is has no Islamic character and that the closest event alike, the Bologna train station bombing in 1980, was carried out by Fascist groups directed by the Italian oligarchy.
In addition, I prove that the director of the Spanish Intelligence service during 3/11 has been punished appointing him to a top post of Spanish oil company REPSOL, after its take over by the Catalonian oligarchy, then ambassador to the Vatican and finally ambassador in Washington, by the Socialist government.
Draw your own conclusions. And by the way, yes, I think if the Tea Party movement is seen as a threath, a black operation like it was the Reichstag fire will take place.