France also has a higher education rate than Spain, meaning that its workforce is better equipped to handle complex manufacturing tasks or high-end service roles. This is also evidenced by the percentage of population below the poverty line -- France has much greater human resources than does Spain. Both nations are net users and importers of energy. Neither has strong reserves of fossil fuels and ultimately must import the majority

Health Care in the U.S. And Spain What Can the U.S. Learn About Health Care from Spain? In 2009, Spain's single-payer health care system was ranked the seventh best in the world by the World Health Organization (Socolovsky, 2009). By comparison, the U.S. health care system ranted at 37 (Satiroglou, 2009). The Spanish system offers coverage as a right of citizenship that is constitutionally guaranteed. Spanish residents pay no expenses out-of-pocket, with

2004-2010: The Building of a Crisis Greece's admittance into the Eurozone had its skeptics at the time it happened, and the controversy increased with the admission in 2004 that the deficit figure was fudged in order to allow Greece to join the exchange rate mechanism on January 1, 2000, which was key to the country being allowed to use the Euro when the currency was first introduced on January 1, 2002. Between

European Union and Euro Currency Crisis One of the major long-term issues that have damaged the euro is the fear about whether the governments in Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Italy will honor their $4.2 trillion debts (Burgen, 2012). Failure to honor these debts has far reaching consequences on European banks which own these countries debts. Struggling banks are likely to suffer investors' confidence and credit. Countries that are beneficiaries of

European Debt Crisis Beginning in 2010, Europe was plunged into a major financial crisis. This is because many of the weaker member states (i.e. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland) were running high deficits to finance different social programs. When the economy was strong, these initiatives were used as a way to help win the support of the electorate. At the same time, many individuals believed that this kind of approach was

Eurozone Crisis The Eurozone is currently facing a crisis on a number of fronts. The most pressing of these is Greece, which is heavily indebted to other Eurozone countries, creating a budget crisis in the country (Raman, 2011). As the risk of default on Greek sovereign debt increases, this puts downward pressure on the value of the euro. Other nations within the Eurozone are, in order to salvage the integrity of