Austerity to reduce spending, and decrease the need for imports, and liberalization reforms to reduce real wages, and promote internal devaluation, have been going on for a while in the European periphery to promote rebalancing, that is, to reduce the current account deficits and allow for continuous service of the debt.
How much fiscal adjustment and wage reduction has already been pushed by the Troika (ECB, EU, IMF)? Quite a bit in fact. Figure 1 below shows the fiscal adjustment (all data from the
European Commission’s Statistical Annex of the European Economy, Spring 2012). [Note that the crisis was not
fiscal]
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here.
Does the Irish adjustment include the bank bailout? Because if it does it's misleading. The bank bailout was a "once off" payment and not a cumulative flow that could be "cut".
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