{"id":14311,"date":"2015-11-12T07:06:11","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T12:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14311"},"modified":"2015-11-12T07:06:11","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T12:06:11","slug":"is-the-troika-about-to-lose-control-of-south-western-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=14311","title":{"rendered":"Is the Troika About to Lose Control of South-Western Europe?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Is the Troika About to Lose Control of South-Western Europe?<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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The Price of \u201cAusterity\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Passos Coelho, who was until Tuesday Prime Minister of Portugal, knew \u201cwhat to do.\u201d After signing along the dotted line for a \u20ac78 billion bailout he embraced the Troika\u2019s austerity agenda with abandon. Public spending was slashed, taxes were hiked, wages were cut, and a whole gamut of public assets and services were privatized.<\/p>\n

As they say in Brussels these days, no pain, no gain. After four years of excruciating belt-tightening, Portugal was apparently back on the mend, despite its public debt almost doubling since 2008. Its economy had been through the grinder but it had come out the other end in much leaner shape. The public deficit had shrunk from 11% in 2011 to 3% today.<\/p>\n

Unemployment had also fallen, and kept falling month after month, to the point where it was getting monotonous. Until two months ago, that is, when it shot back up over 14%. Then came the bomb shell: the country\u2019s Ministry of Statistics announced in a rare moment of candor that unemployment, in an \u201cextended sense,\u201d was actually around 22%. As Deutsche Welle\u00a0reports<\/a>, the Portuguese government had been doctoring the figures to keep the European institutions (i.e. the Troika) happy:<\/p>\n

European politicians prefer lower unemployment figures rather than higher ones, and as a consequence, there are now unemployment figures in \u201cnarrower\u201d and \u201cextended\u201d senses. Mostly, the headline figures reported are the lower, \u201cnarrower\u201d ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Flimsy Fa\u00e7ade<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In other words, in the real world Portugal has almost identical depression-era levels of unemployment as Spain. Its government is just more skilled at masking the grimness of its economic reality.<\/p>\n

However, hiding a decidedly grim reality with a flimsy fa\u00e7ade of doctored numbers may work on international investors and rating agencies \u2013 at least for a while \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t work on those who have to live in that grim reality. And at election time that can be a serious setback.<\/p>\n

When Coelho\u2019s governing coalition received only 38% of the vote in last month\u2019s elections, the game was as good as up, especially when it became clear that three parties on the left \u2014 the so-called \u201ctriple left\u201d \u2014 had won an absolute majority and seemed willing to form a coalition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the Troika About to Lose Control of South-Western Europe? The Price of \u201cAusterity\u201d Passos Coelho, who was until Tuesday Prime Minister of Portugal, knew \u201cwhat to do.\u201d After signing along the dotted line for a \u20ac78 billion bailout he embraced the Troika\u2019s austerity agenda with abandon. Public spending was slashed, taxes were hiked, wages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[40,95,5660,281,284,4696,2868,6118],"class_list":["post-14311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-austerity","tag-brussels","tag-don-quijones","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-portugal","tag-troika","tag-wolf-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14312,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311\/revisions\/14312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}