A few months ago, if you read something that mentioned PIIGS, chances are you would probably mutter, hey, some goofball out there doesn’t know how to spell pig.
No more. Now we all know what PIIGS stands for: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, five countries in the Euro-zone that foolishly did what a lot of big-time spenders do, borrow way too much during good times and then run into problems repaying their debt. That, of course, raises the specter of debt defaults, the kind of news that rattles investors and pounds world markets.
As we all know, the pounding has already begun, what with Greece wreaking international havoc with its sovereign debt woes, causing stock markets around the world to slide. The general Wall Street consensus is that if the PIIGS undergo more financial and economic pain–which a number of overseas economic trackers consider a foregone conclusion–markets around the globe will get slammed again.
So the $64,000 question is whose next, although some global market trackers insist Greece’s problems, contrary to some expectations, are far from over.
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