Only in Spain

Is like a joke but a bad one. The last to join the charade was Artur Mas, President of La Generalitat (Catalonia Autonomous Government). From "El País": "The Catalan government has slashed staffing levels at hospitals and reduced services, an on Monday proposed that healthcare workers accepted a 50-percent cut in their Christmas bonus. The budgets for education and social services have also been shaved. The measures announced on Tuesday include a two-month freeze in transfers to private-public care centers for the retired and other groups with special needs". Imagine this, if payments for the elderly and special needs groups are openly delayed, what we can expect is happening to other not-so-socially-sensitive bills? Four months delay? Six month delay? Is has been said that Spain´s budget deficit targets have been met only for the practice of kicking the can down the road which, translated into Spanish, means delaying most of payments due to the private sector at least by two months. In other words, how easy is to comply with your targets when your annual payments schedule only have 10 months... See what happens next year when those unpaid bills from 2011 have to be incorporated in 2012 budget... By the way, Catalonia has much to risk if it doesn´t meet the deficit target and so its credit ratings are further downgraded: on November will have to roll-over 3.15 billion euros in "Patriotic Bonds" @ 4.75%...