ROME – Among the many devastating effects of the current global financial crisis, one of the most pernicious in the developed world is the upward trajectory of the unemployment rate for youth, which rose by six percentage points in the OECD area from 2007 to 2009, with Spain experiencing an alarming 42% youth unemployment rate in 2010. When young people cease to be the engine of an economy, long-run economic growth is endangered, and social unrest becomes a real threat to the democratic political order.