Spain officially in recession

[Joanne98]

Source: AFP


MADRID (AFP) — Spain officially entered recession in the last quarter of 2008, when its once-booming economy shrank 1.0 percent as the global financial crisis accelerated a slowdown in the property market, official data showed Wednesday.

The National Statistics Institute (INE) confirmed its own provisional figures published on February 12 that showed Europe's fifth-largest economy is in its first recession since 1993.

Gross Domestic Product shrank by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2008 from the second. Recession is widely defined as two quarters running of contraction of the economy.

The economy expanded by 1.2 percent during all of 2008, a sharp slowdown from the expansion of 3.7 percent in the previous year, the INE said.

Formerly one of the eurozone's chief engines of economic growth and job creation, Spain suffered an abrupt change of fortunes last year when the global financial crisis hastened a correction that was already underway in its key real estate sector, once the engine its decade-long economic boom.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gAQcA8XsSx37BcX9Wh-sSiqhSS0Q

[sofa king]

1. Interesting. How Reagan-like were Spain's economic policies?

I think I'm zeroing in on the vector.

[Lost in CT]

3. I don't think the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party would be mistaken

for Reagan anytime soon.

On the plus side they have legalized same sex marriage and sought peace with the Basque separatists.

There economic policies have been, to be charitable, a mixed bag.

[RedEarth]

2. Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Iceland and the Eastern European countries

all are on the ropes....this is not a pretty picture.