The Irish endured austerity for nearly eight years because they were promised this would lead to improvements in their lives.
"No nation can endure daily austerity without a light at the end of the tunnel," he said, adding that too much pain "will fuel a social explosion".
An independent Scotland would need to endure additional austerity in order to balance the new government's books, according to a study by a respected economic think-tank.
Like Greece, the latter two binged on cheap debt before the crisis, suffered banking meltdowns and were forced to endure the austerity that came as a condition of bail-outs of their own.
Actually, no — nobody has: The bottom line is that while Latvia's willingness to endure extreme austerity is politically impressive, its economic data don't support any of the claims being made about its economic lessons.
For far, far too long, local Greek officials and volunteers have had to shoulder this burden, and at a time when they have had to endure paralysing austerity measures and the most recent financial crisis.
"Asking the little man on the street, the low-income salary earner, to endure endless austerity to solve this crisis, when not that long ago we didn't even know the problem existed because no politician ever talked about it, is totally unfair".
If likely financially problematic countries were removed or forced to endure severe austerity budgeting, Germany which exports 47% of its goods to Europe would be left wondering to which countries it could it export.
