one word: berlusconni

I don't think the EU, or the euro was designed as a yacht club for the rich or powerful only. It had something to do with stability, union, growth, development... Difficult but even the jet set can fall on tough times.

Dear Porche,


I have no idea of what this will do to the CHF/EURO exchange rate but I know since a child what kind of help IMF brings to a country when it brings help borrowing more money which will have indeed to be payed back with interest rates later: jobs are lost, companies are shut down and national companies are privatized to be destroyed few months later.

I think that for any Irish, Spanish, Greek or Portuguese who has lost its job, its house, many times its family and its future all that is said about getting help paying it later makes few sense.

Severe cuts in education, health and social security have been done since Socrates arrived as prime minister. But the markets where nervous and the interest rates on our debt grew.

There is no more middle class in our country anymore because in many homes a father or a mother lost its job and the salaries that still existed were to low, alarming poverty has risen but again the markets where nervous and the interest rates on our debt grew.

Taxes where risen and pensions and salaries where cut but the markets where always nervous and our debt grew.

The parliament refused the fourth package of severe cuts because the biggest opposition party is once again greedy for power and trying to buy the whole country with change but in fact we only hope the worst to come. The prime minister resigned and the opposition promises stronger cuts now, but the markets got even more nervous... the most influential private Portuguese banks which where helped during the financial crisis in 2009 by our state refused to help the country...so we asked for a bailout.

I may not know much about economy but something is for sure: all that you get you have to pay it back, maybe if we had renegotiated our debt perhaps there would not be a need for a bailout, I do not know about money but I know that the press, powerful financial institutions and the markets can bring countries down and that is not a joke:it is a tragedy.

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Was it worth? Everything is worth, If the soul is not small. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)

Sparrowgirl,
If I were a Portuguese leader, here what I would do: I'd tell all Portuguese citizens who are suffering and burdened with high taxes to flood the EU labor markets and stuff themselves in those highly industrialized nations (Germany CH NL ). Once your fellow non-peripheral states get the pinch, I'm sure that they'll start sympathizing with you & rethink their strategy...maybe even stop calling you 'peripheral'.

Btw, bailouts come with an % rate, they're not free! they'll hammer the Portuguese for a very long time to come.

That is exactly what I said, we know it already, painfully.

The best article written about what really happened is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/op...13fishman.html

hope it helps. I believe the last part of it is quite explicit: nobody is safe anymore.