por admin » Mié May 12, 2010 7:42 am
Comienzan las medidas dolorosas en nombre de la responsabilidad fiscal.
A ver si el gobernador de California y NY siguen los pasos, el republicano de New Jersey fue el primero en hacerlo.
Espania recorta los salarios de los empleados publicos en 5% y congelara los aumentos hasta el 2011, suspendio el aumento a las pensiones, le quito el subsidio de $3,168 a los papas nuevos y recorto la inversion en 6 billones de euros para el 2011.
Los miembros del gobierno recibiran un recorte de salarios del 15%
Habra que esperar y ver cuanto se demoran los Espanioles para salir a las calles a avergonzar a su pais en frente de todo el mundo.
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Spain Lowers Public Wages After EU Seeks Deeper Cuts (Update3)
A A A By Emma Ross-Thomas
May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero performed a U-turn and cut public wages, caving in to pressure from the rest of Europe to reduce spending to avoid being dragged deeper into the Greek crisis.
Spain will cut public wages 5 percent this year and freeze them in 2011 while suspending a pension raise, Zapatero told parliament in Madrid today. A 2,500-euro ($3,168) subsidy for new parents will be scrapped and foreign aid trimmed, while public investment will fall 6 billion euros in 2011.
The government, whose members will take a 15 percent pay cut, aims to push the deficit to 6 percent of gross domestic product next year from 11.2 percent in 2009, in what would be the largest two-year reduction since at least 1980. Finance Minister Elena Salgado said as recently as February that Spain would honor wage agreements with public-sector unions.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Jose Garcia-Zarate, a fixed income strategist at 4Cast Ltd. in London. “Cuts in public wages are the clearest message that the government is serious. This is basically what the market has been calling for.”
The Ibex-35 index gained after Zapatero spoke, rising 0.6 percent at 1:23 p.m. in Madrid. The extra yield investors demand to hold Spanish bonds rather than German equivalents eased to 95.7 basis points compared with 98.9 basis points yesterday. The spread has almost halved since the May 10 announcement of a euro-region rescue plan, under which the European Central Bank has started buying government bonds.
Change in Direction
The government moves mark a change in direction for the Socialist premier who was re-elected in 2008 on pledges of higher pensions, better welfare and full employment. After contagion from the Greek crisis prompted a surge in Spanish borrowing costs, euro-area finance ministers devised an unprecedented bailout mechanism worth almost $1 trillion, and called on Spain and Portugal to deepen budget cuts in return.
The new measures “seem to go in the right direction,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said today in Brussels. Spain has a below-average public-debt load at 53 percent of GDP last year and Salgado has said the government has no plans to use the euro-region aid facility.
‘Rupture’
As budget cuts have prompted violent demonstrations in Greece, Spanish union UGT, which supported a Greek general strike this month, said the measures marked a “rupture in the government’s political discourse” and would result in protests. Spain has not seen a general strike since 2002, when the People’s Party governed, and Zapatero has tended to seek dialogue with unions.
“It marks a change in relations with the unions,” UGT Secretary General Candido Mendez told reporters in Madrid.
The Comisiones Obreras union also criticized the steps as “unjust” and called for a “massive” response in the streets, Efe newswire reported, citing Secretary General Ignacio Fernandez Toxo.
Spain’s budget deficit, at 11.2 percent of GDP last year, was the third-widest in the euro region, after Greece and Ireland, prompting Standard & Poor’s to cut its credit rating last month.
Ireland announced public-wage cuts last year, which helped cut its risk premium over German bunds as low as 127 basis points in March from 283 basis points a year earlier. Irish Finance Brian Lenihan reduced most government workers’ pay by 5 percent to 10 percent in the 2010 budget.
Similar Efforts
“Greece and Ireland have done it and they have similar sized deficits to Spain,” said Ben May, an economist at Capital Economics in London. “It suggests that they are at least starting to tackle the deficit situation head on.”
Spain previously planned to cut the deficit to 9.8 percent this year, larger than the European Commission’s forecast for indebted Greece, and to 7.5 percent in 2011. It still plans to meet the EU’s 3 percent target in 2013.
As concerns over Europe’s sovereign debt crisis spread to U.S. markets, President Barack Obama called Zapatero yesterday and urged him to take “resolute action,” the White House said.
Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez, who has long called for budget discipline, said yesterday the government’s plan for additional cuts is “enormously positive.” Banco Santander SA, Spain’s largest lender, also welcomed the steps today with a spokesperson saying they were “concrete and quantifiable and go in the right direction.”
Threat to Growth
Still, the cuts may undermine economic growth, which returned in the first quarter of this year after an almost two- year recession, Zapatero said. GDP grew 0.1 percent in the first three months of the year, contracting 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the National Statistics Institute said today.
“We think the fiscal tightening is likely to depress economic growth, especially in 2011, when the impact of the measures will be mostly felt,” said Giada Giani, an economist at Citigroup Global Markets in London.
An increase in value-added tax was already planned for July, and Zapatero left the door open for more tax hikes.
“The government thinks those with most economic possibilities should make the greatest effort,” he said. “That doesn’t automatically mean tax increases.”
The economic crisis, which has pushed unemployment to a euro-region high of 20 percent, has eroded support for Zapatero. The opposition People’s Party would win 39.5 percent of the vote if elections were held now, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists, a poll by the state-run Center for Sociological Research showed on May 10.