西斑牙好不好? 好日子到头了. 还好家人不是住那里. unemployment25%

"We have very little room to choose," Rajoy said before the Spanish parliament. "I pledged to cut taxes and now I'm raising them. But the circumstances have changed and I have to adapt to them."

Totaling around $80 billion, Spain announced a series of measures designed to bring down its budget deficit to 6.3% this year and 4.5% in 2013, including:

• Raising the Value Added Tax to 21% from 18%.
• Taxes on energy consumption.
• Reversing property tax cuts granted last year.
• Cutting jobless benefits.
• Cutting pay for state employees by 7%.

With unemployment already near 25% in Spain and its banks saddled with billions of bad loans, it's hard to see how raising taxes and cutting benefits will do anything but harm its already battered economy, at least in the near-term. If Spain follows Greece's example, more austerity will lead to deeper economic stagnation and societal upheaval.