Economic siutation of Europe and the Euro.

[NJ5]

There are different situations. Greece's problems was a lot due to public expenses.

But that's not the case with Ireland, whose problems are almost solely due to a housing bubble. The Irish  taxpayers are now being sold out to the domestic and foreign bankers, who are not suffering at all due to their mistakes. Instead of defaulting on their debt, Ireland is taking on more loans to keep bailing out the crappy banks. The interest on those loans alone amounts to more than $1000 per year for each family that will have to be covered by new taxes if the "bailout" is approved.

One thing to definitely keep in mind: these "bailouts" are poisoned gifts, they are in fact partially enslaving the taxpayers to be the sole sufferers of bankers' mistakes.

If you look at Portugal, the fiscal situation (debt and deficit) is pretty much the same as countries like the US (not as bad as Greece for example), but the interest rates demanded by the financial markets are going up so much that borrowing more becomes impossibly expensive.

PS: There will be more countries in trouble, yes. Compared to Portugal, Spain has better public finances but very high unemployment. If Spain's finances blow up (interest rates are very high for them too), that's a huge economic hole on the EU, as Spain has 50 million inhabitants. Eventually all the countries will be affected.