Europe's Economic Woes

Europe's Economic Woes

In 2008, the American economy took a turn for the worse, dropping the already volatile financial system into a full-blown recession. Correspondingly, the world economy fell. European debt is massive, and tenuous European economies were hit hard by the economic failure. Britain fell into a serious recession and began to fight bank fraud like the current Goldman Sachs case. Spain is being forced to reexamine their regulation of the banking sector, though are not doing so very willingly. Iceland, one of the first nations to fall victim to the international economic problems, experienced a huge financial meltdown and a disintegration of their monetary system.

In Greece, massive debt has ravaged the economy. Through tax cuts and decreased spending, the Greek government is attempting to control the crisis, to no avail. Other European nations have decided to bail out Greece, providing the nation with around 110 billion Euros, but the Greek economy is still distressingly bad. Angry Greek workers protested the new spending plan Wednesday, assaulting a Greek bank and causing the deaths of three inside the building; an attempt was also made to get into parliament. Historically, the Greek economy has been less than fantastic. Still, it can be saved with a combination of bailouts and careful federal spending to circulate money through the economy while slowly reducing Greek debt. Unfortunately, Greece is far from the only nation facing a horrific economy.

Divided savings banks in Spain have caused the Spanish government to take swift action and, today, the Spanish Prime Minister, socialist Rodríguez Zapatero, finally agreed to a deal with a more center-right leader on how to handle the failing financial system and what extent to bail out the banks. Spain also suffers from a 20% unemployment rate and massive deficit. As a final attempt to control the downwardly spiraling financial system, Spanish banks will be forced to merge together soon. The Spanish government have been and remain among the lead doubters of the Greek bailout by many European countries. 

Spain and Greece are far from the only countries suffering. Portugal's economy is suffering greatly, and eyes in Europe- at least those interested in continuing to bail out failing nations- are beginning to focus there. Until Europe's many and varied economies are repaired properly, the world economy will never be able to recover.