Eurozone Debt crisis- is Portugal next?

While the UK was mulling over the future effects of George Osborne's budget yesterday,the Portuguese parliament rejected the minority government's austerity package that hoped to avoid a EU bailout.

As a result, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates resigned on Wednesday,thrusting the Eurozone back into the spotlight and weakening the euro as markets see a bailout as more likely and speculate on the size of it.

Figures as large as 100billion Euros have been suggested as being required to shore up Portuguese finances.

However, european leaders are not scheduled to meet to discuss the strengthening of the Euro bailout fund until June.This will cause uncertainty in the markets and Euro weakness until resolved and deflect attention away from the effects of UN interevention in Libya and radiation fears from the stricken reactors in Japan, though both situations are very much on the radar.