By LIZ ALDERMAN ATHENS — Anastasia Kastaniotou, a struggling mother of three, stood near the Greek Parliament building on Wednesday and threw up her hands as she contemplated an €11.5 billion austerity package that her country’s government was trying to tie up this week to keep Greece in the euro.   Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been scrambling to seal a deal with his coalition government for fres ...

By ALEN MATTICH   The European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are negotiating hard among themselves about how to structure debt relief for the Greek economy. The latest reports suggest they might have come up with a temporary deal among themselves. But what the EU, ECB and IMF want won't matter unless they get the Greek government to play as well. And that's by no mean ...

By Andrew Rettman BRUSSELS - Official figures show that EU countries sold Greece over €1 billion of arms at the same time as negotiating its first bail-out back in 2010. France was by far the biggest seller, with a €794 million aircraft deal, according to recently-released European Council data on arms licences granted by member states. It also sold €58 million of missiles and €19 million of electronics use ...

“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 ...

Greece’s debt-holders Volunteers wanted A CATCHY new phrase has been added to the Orwellian lexicon of Euro-speak, where terms such as “stability and growth” actually mean the opposite. This is “private-sector involvement” (PSI), which is code for imposing losses on Greece’s private creditors. The International Monetary Fund’s most recent review of the Greek economy, in December, gives an indication of the ...