Bar-On presents '09 budget, says economy going through difficult period

"The Israeli economy is not going through a simple period. There is a problematic integration of the global economic crisis and [domestic] political instability," Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On said as he presented the 2009 budget at a press conference Tuesday. "The complicated, complex and unbearable political reality has not escaped me. I know how to identify stages of confusion and an establishment freeze," he emphasized.