Stelzer, Irwin.
It is one year since the powers-that-be in the euro zone crafted a plan to get Greece over a liquidity hump and onto the sunlit meadows of fiscal sustainability. Since then, the fiscal situation in Greece has deteriorated, the economy has gone into recession, and the team sent to check on Greece’s progress today will undoubtedly struggle to find the words to translate the reality of the country’s failure to meet its deficit-reduction targets into euro-zone-speak for “success.” Buoyed by that success, the euro-zone team is administering similar medicine to Portugal. The patient is unlikely to recover.
In return for agreeing to reduce its deficit from 9.1% of GDP to 3% by 2013—one year faster than Greece and Ireland—Portugal will get a €26 billion ($37 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund at an interest rate of 3.25%, and a €52 billion European loan at a rate to be announced at the May 16-17 meeting of the EU finance ministers, when the package is to be formally agreed. Unless, of course, Finland, in deference to the strength shown by the anti-bailout True Finns party in the recent elections to the Eduskunta, vetoes dipping into the €440 billion European Financial Stabilization Mechanism.
Πηγή: The Wall Street Journal