The Troika are now trashing Portugal

The markets and broadcast media seem much concerned with Greece, understandably enough, but Portugal and Spain must not slip from view. This is a pan-European crisis and all member states will soon be disastrously affected in one way or another.

The Seattle Times, has a report from yesterday from Portugal, linked here. The following is how the article begins:

Portugal's jobless rate jumped to a record 14 percent at the end of last year, the national statistics agency reported Thursday in the latest grim sign of the bailed-out country's worsening economic problems.
The unemployment rate is the highest since authorities began compiling comprehensive national registers in 1950

That is quite frankly absolutely astounding for any of us who knew Portugal during or immediately after the overthrow of its last dictator in the mid-nineteen seventies, read here. Who could have guessed that the EU would bring that country so low, does President Barroso ever summon up the courage to nowadays return to the homeland he has helped to wreck?