By Peter Schwarz 8 October 2011 The European institutions have clearly changed course in relation to Greece. Instead of the “rescue” of the country, they are now discussing its bankruptcy, and reducing the risk of contagion. The euro rescue fund, supposed to guarantee Greece’s solvency, is being used to secure the creditor banks against the consequences of state bankruptcy. The change of course has happened ...

Groningen 6 Oct. Yanis Varoufakis Co-speaker Michael Koetter Language English The Euro is in crisis. Europe’s politicians and central bankers are in confusion. And European electorates balk at more bailouts and more centralization. Is the Euro finished? Should the ‘PIIGS’ (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) never have joined the Eurozone? Will Greece go bankrupt? Who will follow? And do we need a U ...

A Greek default and exit must be taken in the people's interests – not entrusting the process to the EU, IMF and banks. Costas Lapavitsas for guardian.co.uk Greece is facing an economic and social disaster, the result of its so-called rescue by the "troika" of the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. Greece must change course to avoid a grim future for its people: it must defau ...

Sep 12th 2011, 18:13 by R.A. | WASHINGTON MANY people have been linking to this Spiegel piece, on how the Germans are preparing for the possibility of a Greek default. It's a remarkable read. Consider: "The rest of Europe is losing patience with Athens. And after 18 months of crisis in the country, there is still no improvement in sight. Key economic figures are worsening, and there are growing doubts over ...

In July, 2008, on the eve of the biggest financial crisis in memory, the European Central Bank did something both predictable and stupid: it raised interest rates. The move was predictable because the E.C.B.’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, was an inflation hawk; he worried about rising oil and food prices and saw a rate hike as a way of tamping them down. But the move was also remarkably ill timed. The cr ...

Direct Power, or dp, is a global action team against the IMF and the international banking system. It will soon become a large organization. dp coordinates action against banks and bankers in different countries. Banks rather than governments are the most important players in today’s capitalism. Because profits in production (industry and agriculture) have remained low since the 1970s, the rich invest money ...

by Harald Hau* Last week, the European heads of government added €109 billion to the existing €110 billion rescue plan for Greece. As Europe’s financial sector would have otherwise taken a huge hit, this column address the question: How did the financial sector manage to negotiate such a gigantic wealth transfer from the Eurozone taxpayer and the IMF to the richest 5% of people in the world? When the deal w ...

(Reuters) - Germans may accuse spendthrift euro zone southerners of too much play and not enough work, but they enjoy the most generous annual holiday time in the European Union, a study released on Wednesday showed. Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Paul Taylor Workers in Germany enjoy 30 days of paid holiday a year on average, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions ...

Who doesn’t want to celebrate a great success, especially if it ensures the preservation of his country from total financial disaster which until recently had being consider inevitable. And there is much need for celebration indeed, for an outburst of joy, a success, a breakthrough from all this discomfort and painful failures the country experienced since the outbreak of the "Greek crisis". But ultimately, ...

By Mark Gongloff After this week’s political drama in Greece has faded, the EU and private investors still must come up with a way of rolling over Greek debt without triggering a default. And it increasingly looks like the plan being hammered out for that purpose will be bad for Greece. In a nutshell, the idea is that banks and insurance companies owning Greek debt will be able to trade half of the Greek bo ...