Global Financial and Economic Crisis and the EU Economic Governance Failure – Evidence From Spain

The process of public sector restructuring, known in the economic literature as the New Public Management (NPM), came to a deadlock as the global financial and economic crisis broke out in 2008. The expansion of cheap credit, market dereglementation and asset securitization, speculative bubbles, the mixture of euphoria, greed and even naivety and ignorance of the economic players outlined an international financial system which was not subordinated any more to the real economy, but to the own principles, similar to Ponzi schemes or casino rules (Posner, 2011, Kindleberger and Aliber, 2011, Rajan, 2010, Stiglitz, 2010, Roubini and Mihm, 2010). All these generated, at global level, the deepest recession after the Great Depression. The anti-crisis measures came without delay, but they did not produce the expected results. At the Euro Zone level, an almost immediate and direct effect of the crisis and the accompanying countercyclical fiscal measures was that of enhancing the fiscal burden for governments. The levels of fiscal deficit and the public debt as percentages of GDP substantially increased and, gradually, another crisis broke out: the Euro Zone sovereign debt crisis. As a result, at the level of the EU governance, in order for the authorities to be able to improve it, there were adopted distinct strategies, programs and instruments. In spite of the converging efforts at the EU as well as national levels, the majority of the countries in the Euro Zone were not able to find the right formula of restarting economic growth. The present analysis brings to the forefront Spain’s experience, which represents a clear example of governance (and NPM) failure, as neither the countercyclical measures adopted for the recovery, in accordance with the keynesyan principles, nor the austerity packages that followed them were not able to induce the economic growth, so essential for diminishing unemployment.