Another holier than thou BBC man

BBC Europe correspondent Matthew Price favours us with his comments on the demonstrations in Spain. Youth unemployment is high, he rightly says.

Europe's leaders have chosen, to a greater or lesser extent, to ignore the voices on the streets. Believing instead that austerity is the way out of the economic crisis.

And, so far, the protests across Europe have not grown into anything big enough to force them to change tack.

Just how would they change tack?

First, the demonstrators have no agreed programme. Second, the economies are up to their necks in debt. So what, Matthew, is the alternative to "austerity", aka trying to balance the books gradually so as not to need to borrow too much more from banks which are distressed enough already, thank you?

Yes, there is indeed an alternative, defaulting on debt repayments, and leaving the euro and devaluing. But this is probably not in Matthew's mind, any more than it's in the mind of the demonstrators whose countries have lived high on the hog for too long.

As we've mentioned before, there's also the small matter of Spanish local authorities' hidden debt. As the WSJ reports, changes to regional and municipal governments could lead to the discovery of piles of undeclared debt, as happened in Catalonia. "After moderate Catalan nationalists dislodged a Socialist government in the wealthy northeastern region in November, incoming officials said the local budget deficit was twice as big as previously thought."

Hidden-debt concerns played a central role in campaigning in regions like Castilla-La Mancha, where the PP and local business leaders said the region hasn't booked 90,000 unpaid invoices of around €1 billion ($1.42 billion). Maria Dolores de Cospedal, the PP's candidate for regional president, had pledged the first thing she will do if elected is commission an audit of Castilla-La Mancha's accounts.

So far from being able to spend more money, the Spanish government has no idea what total government debt is.

Got that, Matthew?