°Across Europe, parents who assumed that after World war II each generation would be better off than the last are watching the debt crisis sweep aside those certainties.
Greek teachers and state workers no longer have jobs for life, students at British universities face US-style tuition, anf french have had to join other europeans in retiring later.
Politicians across the 27 European union countries are adopting austerity measures that come to about 450 billion euros ($600 billion).
"Western European society cannot continue the way it has been" says Gabriel Stein, a director at Lombard Street Research. "We have reached a limit to how much can realistically be done through the public sector".
Spain aims to trim more than 40-billions euros from its deficit to curb borrowing costs that reached a 14 year high of 6,7% for 10-year bonds in November. If bonds traders judge the effort a failure, bond yelds will rise again to unaffordable levels, and the government will have to seek bailout.
Then it will be like Greece, with much of its economic sovereignity handed over to ECB and IMF. More than 2,500 Greeks visited a government building in Dafni to order cheap potatoes.
" Greeks find themselves in a situation where we don't have enough to survive," Vasiliki Kladia, who has three children and has been unemployed for fours years, said " There are no jobs anywhere.Wages and pensions are very low , and everyone is in debt," she said. The potato is relatively recent arrival to Greece. Austerity measures introduced by Italy's prime minister Mario Monti's government have pushed italian gas price to the highest in europe, an average of $9.17 per gallon, with taxes accounting for about 54% of the total.
It's a profound shock for this country of car lovers, where the rate of vehicle owernship is among the highest in the world, and one that is producing even more economic pain, as italians curtail travel and shun new-car purchases. " we are hitting the bottom: it can't be worse than this , " FIAT Chief Exsecutive Sergio Marchionne said. Wealthy drivers don't feel the pain, they keep on driving their luxury cars. many italians are clearly angry.°
BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK, 8 Apr 12
