HockeyDad wrote:It has nothing to do with any sort of choices Americans have. We still have creditors and we have "hope". Sucks to be somewhere that doesn't!
Sure it does. We have it real good for now. My analogies were applicable to both, except that Spain no longer has options and we do.
Anyhow, I just started to Spain's problem on a national level and found this from the BBC:
What went wrong with Spain?"Spain's story illustrates the fact that the eurozone's problems run far deeper than the issue of excessive borrowing by ill-disciplined governments.
Greece, Portugal and Italy all had way too much debt.
But the Spanish government's borrowing was under control - that is, it ran a balanced budget on average every year until the eve of the 2008 financial crisis.
And as Spain's economy grew rapidly before 2008, its debt-to-GDP ratio was falling. Germany's, by contrast, continued to rise.
After Spain joined the euro, the country experienced a long boom, underpinned by a housing bubble, financed by cheap loans to builders and home buyers.
House prices rose 44% from 2004 to 2008, at the tail end of a housing boom. Since the bubble burst they have fallen by a third.
The economy, which grew 3.7% per year on average from 1999 to 2007, has shrunk at an annual rate of 1% since then.
So, although the Spanish government still had relatively low debts, it has had to borrow heavily to deal with the effects of the property collapse, the recession and the worst unemployment rate in the eurozone."
I haven't looked too much into the regional issues that are plaguing Spain, but they definitely seem to spring from regional overspending and excess borrowing...