The Euro Mess

Available for over a year

As austerity hits ever more European countries, we take a grim tour of the impact on the ground. In Greece we hear that nervous depositors have withdrawn almost 46 billion Euros from Greek banks since September 2009 - just under a fifth of deposits. We learn that a staggering 43% t of young Spaniards are now unemployed, with many working as lowly-paid interns. In Portugal, we report how thousands of families have lost access to payments such as child benefit, at a time when official figures show that without state help, two in five households could fall into poverty. And in Ireland we hear about homeowners struggling to pay mortgages on homes which have fallen in value by up to 80%. And we ask a key question: when the populations of indebted countries are suffering so much from the cutbacks, should the banks and institutions which lent to these countries go on being protected from the pain? Gabriel Stein of Lombard Street Research in London tells us why he thinks they should.