The pain in Spain prompts EU rescue package
It is the purpose of the Lord, we hear in this Sunday’s first reading, to “make the withered tree bloom.” Eurozone finance ministers rushed Spain into an European Union-funded bank rescue package in hopes it will help the withered Spanish economy bloom anew. But forecasters predict . . .
It is the purpose of the Lord, we hear in this Sunday’s first reading, to “make the withered tree bloom.” Eurozone finance ministers rushed Spain into an E.U.-funded bank rescue package in hopes it will help the withered Spanish economy bloom anew. But forecasters predict the country will have to weather some bitter harvests in coming years.
Spain becomes the fourth—and largest—of the 17 countries that use Europe’s common currency to request a bailout, a big blow to a nation that a few years ago took pride as the continent’s economic superstar, only to become the latest hot spot in the eurozone debt crisis.
The amount of the rescue fund, if all of it is tapped, amounts to about $25,000 of new debt for each person in the nation of 47 million, where the average annual salary for those with work is also about $25,000 and the unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 52 percent.
The country is already reeling from deep austerity cuts imposed over the last six months that have raised taxes, made it easier to hire and fire workers, and cut deeply into cherished government programs such as education and national health care. “This year is going to be a bad one,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Sunday in his first comments about the rescue.
Spain becomes the fourth—and largest—of the 17 countries that use Europe’s common currency to request a bailout, a big blow to a nation that a few years ago took pride as the continent’s economic superstar, only to become the latest hot spot in the eurozone debt crisis.
The amount of the rescue fund, if all of it is tapped, amounts to about $25,000 of new debt for each person in the nation of 47 million, where the average annual salary for those with work is also about $25,000 and the unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 52 percent.
The country is already reeling from deep austerity cuts imposed over the last six months that have raised taxes, made it easier to hire and fire workers, and cut deeply into cherished government programs such as education and national health care. “This year is going to be a bad one,” Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Sunday in his first comments about the rescue.
Sources: Articles by Raphael Minder for the New York Times and Alan Clendenning,
Harold Heckle, and Jorge Sainz for the Associated Press