By Amitabh Pal, June 16, 2011 The global austerity agenda is encountering a hurdle in Greece: The Greek people aren’t prepared to put up with forced deprivation. In order to have loans to foreign creditors made good, international institutions, led by the European Union, are demanding ever-harsher assaults on Greek society. But the Greek people have fought back, protesting in huge numbers and causing the ne ...

Next financial crisis is in public services by Serge Halimi, March 2010 States rescued the banks in country after country, neither asking nor getting anything in return. The banks are now using their newfound strength against the state, threatening to reveal the accounting tricks the banks themselves had recommended to hide some of the debt. After all, interest rates on loans are higher when the financial r ...

By LOUISE STORY, LANDON THOMAS Jr. and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ February 14, 2010 Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation e ...

By Christopher Lawton And Laura Stevens Greece is for sale – cheap - and Germany is buying. German companies are hunting for bargains in Greece as the debt-stricken government moves to sell state-owned assets to stabilize the country's finances. Deutsche Telekom AG on Monday said it would purchase an additional 10% stake in Greece's Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA for about €400 million, or roug ...

Greece and other European nations are in trouble because policy elites pushed the continent into adopting a single currency. Lately, financial news has been dominated by reports from Greece and other nations on the European periphery. And rightly so. But I've been troubled by reporting that focuses almost exclusively on European debts and deficits, conveying the impression that it's all about government pro ...