'Fat finger' fumble foxes financial forecast

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/fat-finger-financial-forecast-spain

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A case of fat finger syndrome has forced Spain's finance ministry to admit that it overstated its national debt by €10bn (£8.4bn). The government has put out an embarrassing correction, four days after announcing that the country's public debt in 2014 would be 99.8% of GDP.

According to the corrected figure, it should be 98.9%. Given the size of Spain's economy, and the depth of the recession, the increase amounted to some €10bn worth of debt.

The ministry admitted the mistake, saying it was not sophisticated number-crunching gone awry; the person responsible for typing in the numbers had simply mixed up the last two digits.

Discussing the revised figure, the budget minister, Marta Fernández Currás, said: "It's not much, but at least it moves us a little bit further away from 100% of GDP."

But the lower figure does not represent much good news for the Spanish economy. The government unveiled new austerity measures in its budget last week amid its struggle to battle spiralling debts, and unemployment, standing at just under 26%.

The prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, believes there are small signs of a recovery.

The unnamed ministry bureaucrat, however, will not have to live with much fall-out – unlike the Lehman Brothers dealer who wiped £30bn off the FTSE in 2001 by typing in £300m for a trade meant to be £3m.

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