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Things are bad when you have to sell the silver!

Many countries in Europe are going through hard times.   Greece, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal to name a few.    Leaving aside large numbers of people being unemployed - the figures for young people are truly staggering - the economies of these various countries are unable to sustain themselves without being bailed out, or, as this piece in The New York Times details, selling off valuable paintings, in order to raise funds.    However, not so fast say the people of Portugal.

"Across much of Continental Europe, the euro crisis did in just a few years what political parties in Britain and the United States had been hacking away at for decades: shrink the size of government. That is true perhaps no more so than here in Portugal. Since the onset of the crisis, the government has shed assets including Portugal’s airport management company, a highway operator and the national postal service.

But when it came to selling off a collection of works by the Catalan artist Joan Miró, it was for some a step too far. The government’s announcement that it would sell the collection through the auction house Christie’s in London set off intense discussion of what kind of assets the state should be allowed to sell, and whether the nation’s cultural heritage is off limits.

Portugal’s controversy has now become part of a broader debate across Europe’s hard-hit, if historically treasured, southern tier over the virtues and limits of downsizing government, often centered on the public preservation or privatization of cultural patrimony that touches on the raw nerves of national identity."


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