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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

They still have a noticeable 109% debt-to-GDP ratio, which means quite a bit of debt to service. At crisis peak, their public spending was 66% of GDP (now 40%). At the first hint of recession, they will be in trouble.

You would be forgiven for thinking there are more troubled countries that could be targeted by speculation. Italy has a 130% debt-to-GDP ratio, is still basically in recession, and has 50% public spending to GDP. Spain is approaching 100% debt, 44% public spending, and it looks like it's getting worse. Then there is Portugal, Cyprus and so on. However, if Greece goes in full default, the Euro will likely get battered and all these positions will potentially unravel, including the Irish one.

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> Spain is approaching 100% debt, 44% public spending, and it looks like it's getting worse.

It is. Spain is scheduled to elect the local Syriza equivalent in November.

Morally bankrupt traditional parties and over 20% unemployment would do that to anybody.

Spain lacks a cultural framework that would make the population want market based reforms, as there is so little trust in institutions, employers and employees. Its labor market is not bad because it's impossible to find productive Spaniards, but because productivity, both at the employee and the firm level, is punished.

Podemos is coming, and it's not going to be good for the country. But the alternatives are pretty bleak. Fortunately for Spaniards, a Greece-like catastrophe in Spain would be the death knell of the Eurozone, so the troika will probably bend to Podemos demands, as far as spending goes, as long as some market reforms are done along with said spending. Spain's one way out of this mess is growth.

>Spain lacks a cultural framework that would make the population want market based reforms

I'm no expert on Spanish matters, but didn't they elect their current government, which advocated market based reforms, right in the middle of the crisis??

The UK has 90% public sector debt to GDP, which is a steep rise given it was 52% in 2009, which does make me wonder where they are putting it, given all the austerity stuff, and we also have 140% private sector debt to GDP, down from 200% in 2009.

That's mostly due to overall benefit levels staying constant or increasing due to unemployment, while taxation has collapsed. http://publicpolicypast.blogspot.co.uk/2011_05_01_archive.ht...

The austerity has largely been targeted at vulnerable people who don't actually cost very much in total.

Given the problem is tax receipts collapsing, why has the government changed the rules to make it easier for companies to avoid paying tax in the UK? There is a limit to what can be considered pure incompetence. This looks more deliberately malign.

https://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/rwer-issue-57-richard-...

I guess the charitable interpretation is that they're trying to encourage growth. Whether you believe it will work or not is another matter.

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