Chiça! uma pessoa até se arrepia!

... e coitadinho do Sócrates! com tanto arrepio ainda fica com uma constipação!

Mas o Sócrates não deve ler o New York Times, pois não?

Pressure has been mounting across the Atlantic as Greece, Portugal and a handful of struggling countries that use the euro scramble to pay off mountains of debt accumulated from years of profligate spending.

Like the United States, Europe has been slow to exit recession. France and Germany — the biggest of the 16 countries that use the euro as their currency — have tried to put their financial houses back in order quickly. But countries on the fringe, including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, are having trouble paying for years of debt-driven expansion. Some countries on the fringe of the zone are in deep financial trouble, with high unemployment, clearly unsustainable budget deficits and economies that no longer appear competitive with their European counterparts.

Europe’s politicians, and global investors, have become deeply unsettled about other European countries with huge debt and deficits, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Investors have been demanding bigger premiums to hold the debt of these countries, and this week drove the cost of insuring their debt to new highs. These worries deepened Thursday as Spain, saddled with 19 percent unemployment and huge debt from an American-style housing bust, played down fears of a budget deficit that has ballooned to 11.4 percent of its gross domestic product. Portugal, whose deficits have also spooked investors, suddenly had trouble raising as much short-term credit as it wanted.

Portugal scaled back a bond sale on Wednesday after investors demanded a higher interest rate, The Associated Press reported. Investors wanted compensation for taking a risk on the country’s debt. The benchmark Portuguese stock index was down almost 5 percent Thursday. World markets shuddered Thursday in the face of signs that skittish investors were growing more fearful of lending to Portugal. That country had to scale back a short-term borrowing plan, something Europe is not used to seeing.