In Europe, spending cuts fail to ease debt burdens

WASHINGTON — Europe has endured the pain of layoffs, wage cuts and tax increases designed to bring government debt under control.

So where's the gain?

Far from falling, debt burdens are rising fastest in European countries that have enacted the most draconian austerity programs, according to The Associated Press' Global Economy Tracker, which monitors the performance of 30 major economies.

The numbers back up what many analysts say: Austerity isn't just painful. It can be counterproductive and even make a country's debt load grow.

Many fear the cutbacks will cause Europe to sink into a self-defeating spiral: Higher debt leads to harsher austerity, growing social instability and deeper economic problems. Governments could find it even harder to pay their bills.

The pain is already intense. Portugal's unemployment rate hit a record 14 percent at the end of last year. Ireland's economy contracted a worse-than-expected 1.9 percent in the July-September quarter of 2011. And Greece reported that its already basket-case economy shrank 7 percent in the October-December quarter of last year.

"This isn't a healthy situation," says Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland.

Under a deal approved Tuesday by the 17 countries that use the euro and the International Monetary Fund, Greece will get a $172 billion bailout in exchange for accepting another dose of austerity that includes laying off 15,000 civil servants and slashing the minimum wage by 22 percent.

Progress has been made in the bond market, where interest rates on government bonds have declined. That's made it cheaper for some indebted countries to borrow.

But the drop in rates might not last. And the lower rates probably have less to do with budget cutting than with what the countries' central banks are doing: They're buying bonds, which pushes down rates, and providing low-cost loans for banks to do the same.

Borrowing costs haven't eased for every country: The yield on Portugal's 2-year government note is near a painful 13 percent, up from under 5 percent a year ago.

The best way to compare debt burdens among countries is to look at the debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. When it exceeds 90 percent, it's considered bad for an economy's health. GDP is the broadest gauge of economic output.

The AP's Global Economy Tracker illustrates how countries that have imposed austerity measures to slash costs have actually ended up with bigger debt problems: