Tax havens help rich people hide money that should be spent on schools, hospitals, roads and other public services For example … Switzerland, not only one of the world’s biggest financial centres but also one of the world’s largest tax havens,[1] Switzerland takes first place on the 2011 Financial Secrecy Index.[2]     The dirty details Switzerland is home to about a third of the world’s offshore ...

Living in the new dispensation By Harvey Cox A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised t ...

The OECD has come very close to predicting a depression for Europe unless EU leaders conjure up a lender-of-last resort very quickly, and somehow manage to make the world believe that the EFSF bail-out fund really exists. Even if disaster is avoided, the eurozone growth forecast is dreadful. Italy, Portugal, Greece will all contract through 2012, while Spain, France, Netherlands, and Germany will bounce alo ...

On November 25, two days after a failed German government bond auction in which Germany was unable to sell 35 per cent of its offerings of 10-year bonds, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Germany might retreat from its demands that the private banks that hold the troubled sovereign debt from Greece, Italy, and Spain must accept part of the cost of their bailout by writing off some of ...

By Kassandra at neurope.eu When, in late October, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed with the-then Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to grant Greece the €110 billion mega-loan, the latter agreed, in return for the loan, to purchase military supplies from Germany and France, worth €10.5bn. The purchases made were to be in equal parts between Germany and France. T ...

While ordinary people fret about austerity and jobs, the eurozone's corridors of power have been undergoing a remarkable transformation.   The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has ...

For all the talk about a democratic crisis in euroland, politicians gave much of their sovereignty away in the past decade A novel sight was on display in southern Europe yesterday: voters actually choosing their next prime minister. Over the past month, the Greeks and Italians have seen their leaders tossed out of office and replaced with unelected technocrats. In the case of Spain, which went to the polls ...

A brief history of the racist/fascist/neonazi penetration of Greece’s new ‘technocratic’ government It will prove George Papandreou’s ugliest legacy: that his last-minute childish maneuvering to maximise his waning hold on power (while negotiating his eviction from the PM’s job), has brought into the new ‘national unity’ government four self-declared racists (some of whom are neo-Fascists and one a neo-Nazi ...

By Renee Maltezou (Reuters) - From Berlin to Bratislava, indignant Europeans have gasped at stories of the relatively high wages and generous benefits enjoyed by Greek workers, whose fabled laid-back lifestyles have been blamed for helping bring the euro zone to its knees. Athens' international lenders have pushed for cuts to the 750 euro minimum monthly wage to boost competitiveness, a welcome call for Ger ...

A lobbyist of the multinational elite was appointed prime minister of Greece, an undemocratic political deviation that must be annulled by massive and decisive popular action. PASOK and Nea Democratia agreed at last, after a marathon of consultations, to commonly appoint Loukas Papademos as prime minister. “Democratic Alliance” and LAOS supported the procedure with enthusiasm, while the “Democratic Left” an ...