"A truly terrible year," was the as-sessment of Pedro Passos Coelho, Portugal's prime minister, as he tried to brighten the mood at the annual summer "festa" of his centre-right Social Democrat party (psd) in the Algarve earlier this month. In acknowledging the inescapable fact, he was also confirming the accuracy of his forecast in June 2011 that the country faced two "terrible years" of austerity as it struggled to comply with the terms of its €78 billion ($104 billion) bail-out.
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