The strike in Great Britain over a proposal to force workers to pay more for their retirement shows why  the euro crisis will continue even if the EU can successfully address the sovereign debt issue. The Guardian: High inflation, cuts and the longest period of wage stagnation on record will see the spending power of the average British family plummet over the next five years, a leading thinktank warned on Wednesday. An Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis predicted that average incomes, adjusted for inflation, will fall by 3% this year and further in 2012. The director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, said: "In the period 2009-10 to 2012-13, real median household incomes will drop by a whopping 7.4% - a record matched only by the falls seen between 1974 and 1977." As up to 2 million public sector workers walked out in protest against changes to their pensions, and signs emerged of a potentially damaging rift within the Liberal Democrats in the wake of George Osborne's autumn...(Read Full Post)