In the first group, which includes the so-called
PIIGS, the estimated coefficient is 0.68 (p < 0.10), indicating the absence of deficit sustainability, since government expenditures grow faster than revenues.
During the first observed period even
PIIGS countries managed to maintain their public debt level.
Membership of the Eurozone thus ensured that what was at bottom a bank crisis arising from failures in private financial markets was turned into the sovereign debt crisis of the
PIIGS countries.
europe_be_saved.single.html (defining the term "
PIIGS").
My expectation here is that Italy has been affected by the announcement of the change of strategy made by the ECB in July 2012, since this announcement leads to sharp decrease of the fears of a break-up of the monetary union, to the benefit of those holding bonds issued by the so-called "peripheral" countries (also called "
PIIGS": Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain).
Among the
PIIGS countries an exception to some extent is Spain, whose level of outstanding public debt was at the beginning of crisis lower than that of Germany.
The worst performers included the problem countries in the eurozone (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain--known as the
PIIGS), along with Cyprus and Slovenia.
Today, the shame-tagged
PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece) have had their democratically elected leaders supplanted by austerity technocrats, and have mined their infrastructure to, in the case of Greece, pay off loans originally oversold to them by mercenary US banks, or more typically, to restuff their undisciplined and imploding national private banks.
In recent years, in the context of the Eurozone crisis, the
PIIGS (3) debt crisis and the diminishing EU capacity to invest in its peripheral regions, China started making "inroads" into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE-16) (4) (Stratfor, 2013).
Spain, one of the so-called "
PIIGS" countries affected by crushing debt and a concomitant austerity program, is faced with many of the same problems in its healthcare sector as Italy and Greece.