{"id":182,"date":"2010-05-25T08:35:46","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T12:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.multiplier-effect.org\/?p=182"},"modified":"2010-05-25T08:45:44","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T12:45:44","slug":"the-rain-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/the-rain-in-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"The rain in Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imf.org\/external\/np\/ms\/2010\/052410.htm\">new report<\/a> from the International Monetary Fund has turned attention, at least temporarily, from Greece to the larger potential problem of Spain, where unemployment is roughly 20 percent. A nice (if unsettling) summary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Spain\u2019s economy needs far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. The challenges are severe: a dysfunctional labor market, the deflating property bubble, a large fiscal deficit, heavy private sector and external indebtedness, anemic productivity growth, weak competitiveness, and a banking sector with pockets of weakness. Ambitious fiscal consolidation is underway, recently reinforced and front-loaded. This needs to be complemented with growth-enhancing structural reforms, building on the progress made on product markets and the housing sector, especially overhauling the labor market. A bold pension reform, along the lines proposed by the government, should be quickly adopted. Consolidation and reform of the banking system needs to be accelerated. Such a comprehensive strategy would be helped by broad political and social support, and time is of the essence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The report, along with the government takeover of a faltering savings bank, seemed to get investors worried, even though neither was all that much of a surprise. Nonetheless, the cost of insuring Spanish debt rose, albeit to levels still far below that of Greece.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Spain was <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704026204575265980137168118.html?mod=WSJ_Heard_MoreInMarkets\">able to sell three- to six-month T-bills today,<\/a> attracting bids worth more than twice the total offering. But the interest rate was a lot higher than in April. And last week a sale of 12 to 18 month T-bills fizzled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new report from the International Monetary Fund has turned attention, at least temporarily, from Greece to the larger potential problem of Spain, where unemployment is roughly 20 percent. A nice (if unsettling) summary: Spain\u2019s economy needs far-reaching and comprehensive reforms. The challenges are severe: a dysfunctional labor market, the deflating property bubble, a large [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eurozone-crisis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182\/revisions\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}