March 03, 2012
The NYT had an article on how Spain is struggling to both reduce its deficits to address its debt crisis and try to simultaneously promote growth. It would have been worth pointing out that Spain’s debt crisis is almost entirely a result of the European Central Bank’s policy.
By explicitly refusing to act as a lender of last resort and imposing austerity conditions on Spain and other euro zone countries, the ECB has raised questions in financial markets about Spain’s ability to pay its debt. Spain had been running budget surpluses before the crisis and its debt to GDP ratio remains below that of the UK, the United States and many other countries that have no difficulty borrowing in financial markets.
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