Chart per Bloomberg BusinessWeek story.
The PIIGS acronym refers to financially troubled Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.
What I found interesting: the IMF telling an Old Core country that it needs to cut spending substantially, to include defense spending (WSJ story).
But the Greeks don't get the memo, avoiding the subject in a recent summit with Turkey designed to improve relations. Turkey is in better shape, and as a rising power, naturally spends more on defense.
A lesson there, perhaps, for the US vis-a-vis China. We can obsess over the growth of Chinese defense spending or we can realize that we don't need to outspend them as excessively as in the past. Even at the highest credible estimates, we outspend the Chinese military by 6-fold.
Of course, Greek defense spending isn't the big issue; it's all the social spending.
Still, the lesson hangs there, waiting to be absorbed by the Old Core: we cannot rebalance and age and continue to outspend every targeted rising great power at the same old levels.