Austria pulls the brakes on debt

In a bid to save Austria's credit standing the Austrian Council of Ministers has proposed a constitutional debt ceiling that would stipulate the reduction of the country's sovereign debt to 60 percent of its gross domestic product by 2020. The liberal daily Kurier welcomes the step as a necessary measure: "The debt cap model makes sense. Those experts who say it is too rigid apparently still haven't lost faith that politics will do the right thing at the right moment without pressure, like for example restructuring the budget when the economy booms. If we look back at the past two years we see that the opposite happened. In autumn 2008 indecent election goodies were distributed to counteract inflation. Yet not inflation but the financial crisis looming on the horizon was the real problem. The government has now realised, albeit tardily, that it needs to economise more ambitiously. Because the SPÖ's [Social Democratic Party of Austria] much touted tax for the rich is still half-baked and won't make any real difference."

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