Greece’s secret loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) was a costly mistake from the start. On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country’s debt-management agency in 2005. By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and t ...

The Dutch anti-migration party of Geert Wilders has launched a website where Dutch people can file anonymously complaints on workers from Central and Eastern Europe. To make it easy for prospective ‘plaintiffs’ to remember what exactly it is they are resenting, the platform provides handy categories, e.g. public intoxication, disturbing the public peace, spurring job losses etc. SIgn the petition! The free ...

By bringing together the struggles of students and workers, a historic strike in the Netherlands may contain crucial lessons for the Occupy movement. The occupation we witnessed at the Vrije Universiteit (VU University) in Amsterdam this past week was no ordinary university occupation. But that’s what you get when you combine the energy behind the longest-running sector-wide strike in Dutch history since 19 ...

Nearly 86 percent of private investors have agreed to join in the debt-swap deal that will help Greece avoid an uncontrolled default. But is that good news? Many experts have their doubts. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, economics professor Harald Hau argues that not only will the plan put the burden on taxpayers, but it will mean an even bigger crisis to come. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Almost 86 percent of private-se ...

Neoliberal economics planned in Brussels and Berlin will push Greece into third-world working conditions. The reporting of the Greek tragedy over the last couple of years gives the impression that economics is a master science. Yet, the mainstream economists who gave Lehman Brothers a certificate of rude health just before its collapse, predicted tat by 2012 the Greek economy would start growing. The econom ...

Dear colleagues, We, your colleagues who work in cleaning companies in Greece and clean public and private spaces, we send you our solidarity and support. We face the same problems as you. Our working conditions resemble also the working conditions of the Middle Ages. We admire you for your struggle and we hope that more and more workers will join it and strengthen it so that you would be able to achieve yo ...

On Monday morning thousands of cleaners started a Sit-in Respect in the university campus Uithof in Utrecht. About two thousand cleaners sit in public spaces of the university. “Universities are centres of social progress they have to move forward ... or remain still.” Since January 2nd, 2012, the cleaners fight for respect and the appreciation of their job. The contractors of the cleaning companies such as ...

By Charlotte McDonald BBC News   The eurozone crisis has sown divisions in the European family, and Greece in particular has often been singled out for criticism. Has Greece been living beyond its means? Are Greeks lazy? On this second point, the statistics tell a surprising story. This week Greece is facing more spending cuts after agreeing to a deal of 130bn euros (£110bn, $175bn) to help it avoid ba ...

“How can one speak of default in the future tense when we’re already bankrupt… Don’t you see the people scouring through garbage and sleeping on sidewalks? Those who led us to bankruptcy – the troika and the government – now claim they want to save us from bankruptcy. It’s incredible.” – Mikis Theodorakis, composer and songwriter “Everything is changing. Everything is frightening.” –Kathimerini, Greek newsp ...

We must do something. This is something. Therefore we must do it. Yes, Minister. What can I say? As Felix Salmon says, this really isn’t credible. The problem with all previous rounds here has been that austerity policies depress the economy to such an extent that it wipes out most of the topline fiscal gains: revenue fall, so does GDP, so the projected debt/GDP ratio gets, if anything, worse. Now we have a ...