Spain Gets Latest IMF Caution Flag

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Economists and investors have enough to worry about in Europe. Greece is in a state of collapse. There are concerns that Portugal and Ireland could follow.

Add Spain to the list of nations that the IMF says deserve some concern. Its new “Spain—2011 Article IV Consultation Concluding Statement of the Mission” issued in Madrid says that the country is on the right track but that any departure from reform programs could push the nation’s financial fortunes off track.

Exports could help Spain’s recovery rate rise to 1.5% to 2% GDP improvement.But,

The policy agenda remains challenging and urgent – there can be no let up in the reform momentum. Unwinding accumulated imbalances and reallocating resources across sectors will take years and many difficult policy choices. And some of the underlying problems of the Spanish economy, especially weak productivity growth and the dysfunctional labor market, remain to be fully addressed

 

 

Unemployment has to be at the top of that list. It is currently above 21% and 2% GDP growth is not anywhere near sufficient to change the jobless rate. And, there is no such thing as a “jobless recovery” when one fifth of the working population have no jobs

Douglas A. McIntyre

 

 

 

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author 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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