Playing at Home
The often used phrase “sovereign debt-crisis” happily lumps the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) into the same collective boat, but each national crisis has its own characteristics that make the likelihood of default different from country to country. For Greece, fiscal adjustment is the key issue, as the government has been extravagantly fire-hosing the public sector with borrowed money for some time. For Portugal, however, the key problem is the private sector’s continuing external deficit: the government debt…