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Spain Moves to the Head of the Bailout Line

Getting bailout money from the Eurogroup is very difficult — until it suddenly is not. Because the body has become so concerned about the financial situation of Spain and its banks, the nation quickly will receive nearly $39 billion by the…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published July 10, 2012, 6:40am ET · 2 min read

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Getting bailout money from the Eurogroup is very difficult — until it suddenly is not. Because the body has become so concerned about the financial situation of Spain and its banks, the nation quickly will receive nearly $39 billion by the end of this month, mostly to aid private financial firms. Spain will get this money, and a total of nearly $120 billion in aid, even though it will need an extra year to reach its financial targets. That pushes the date of reckoning to 2014. The pressure to aid Spain stands as an example that the Eurogroup will break its own rules about bailouts, if its members believe that immediate problems are more important than strict bailout regulations. The action also means the process of getting aid to troubled nations will become increasingly chaotic as problems spread unevenly across the region.

“The Eurogroup supports the recently adopted Commission recommendation to extend the deadline for the correction of the excessive deficit in Spain by one year to 2014,” ministers said in a statement. There really was no choice in the matter. Spain’s banks are near collapse, in part due to trouble in the country’s real estate market. Spain’s economy is in recession. Unemployment sits at more than 25%. But Spain’s most recent major problem is its most acute one. The nation’s tax receipts have been eroded severely by employment attrition and a disintegration of its business sector.

The term “kicking the can down the road” is often used to describe European leaders’ inability to address sovereign debt problems resulting from recession and a lack of economic stimulus. It the case of Spain, the analogy is not apt. Spain’s problems are so severe and entrenched that the road is too long for kicking to work.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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