The International Monetary Fund (IMF), an international organization heavily funded by the United States, on Friday reached an agreement with Pakistan to provide $3 billion in short-term financial aid. The Pakistani bond market perked up at news that a potential debt default crisis has been delayed, but not enough to suggest that investors see a bright future for Pakistan’s finances.
Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police on Friday in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname. Several dozen of the protesters were able to force their way into the National Assembly building, but were driven back with tear gas, while others burned and looted shops across the city. The United Nations expressed concerns on Monday that more violence could be in store, possibly building into an effort to overthrow President Chandrikapersad Santokhi.
George Osborne, David Cameron’s “Austerity Chancellor” and the anti-Brexit campaign’s “Scaremonger-General” in 2016, believes the next British election is “Labour’s to lose” as the Conservative government gives the appearance of having lost control of multiple crises.
Eight out of ten Swedish municipalities will be forced to make serious cuts to local services this year due to changing demographics and costs of newly arrived migrants. Just under half of the municipalities, 46 percent, plan cuts to disability
Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi signed an agreement on Monday for further Greek cooperation with China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan, the latest step in the debt-driven courtship between Athens and Beijing.
The Greek government has warned that it could face “increased financial and political instability” in the near term if the United Kingdom left the European Union without a deal, handing British negotiators potentially useful leverage.
Amman – Jordan’s senate met Sunday for a special session after another night protests across the country against IMF-backed austerity measures including a draft income tax law and price hikes.
Prince Abdullah bin Saud bin Mohammed was named president of the Saudi Marine Sports Federation in October. His tenure came to an abrupt end after three months on Wednesday, when he was sacked over his criticism of royal arrests seen by skeptics as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s effort to consolidate power.
PARIS, FRANCE (AFP) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday hailed French President Emmanuel Macron’s “ambitious” reform program, saying his spending, labor and tax overhauls could go “a long way” toward tackling high unemployment and weak growth.
LONDON (AP) — Key government ministers are pressuring Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May to ease austerity and remove a pay cap for public sector employees.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — An anti-austerity rally in Greece’s capital turned violent Wednesday as a general strike halted flights, ferries and public transportation, and thousands joined protest marches across the country. A small group of protesters threw gasoline bombs and
ATHENS, Greece (AP) – A nationwide general strike disrupted services across Greece Wednesday, as lawmakers were set to approve another batch of reforms that will impose years more hardship on austerity-weary Greeks. Unions called the strike to protest new belt-tightening
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Lawmakers in Greece started a four-day debate Monday on whether to approve a new package of spending cuts that will extend the number of years Greeks have lived under austerity to more than a decade. Amid
ROME (AFP) – Italy’s debt-burdened government approved a package of economic reforms Tuesday designed to cut 3.4 billion euros from its deficit this year, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said, following pressure from Brussels.
Geopolitical Futures’ George Friedman has warned that Saudi Arabia’s inability to keep oil prices up to $90 a barrel will frustrate the kingdom’s effort to balance its books, meaning it is only a matter of time before “Riyadh’s unique social stability comes apart.”
The Conservative party’s failed attempts to control spending and bring down public debt breach “human rights”, the United Nations (UN) has declared, calling for a bigger state and a higher minimum wage.
From The Independent: I want to see the election of a Labour government: I want to see an end to austerity, key services like our railways back into public ownership, and the NHS protected from privatisation. But Britain’s membership of
Members of the European Parliament have voted to increase the European Union’s annual budget by an astonishing €4 billion next year, even as member states struggle with the fallout from Brussels-imposed austerity measures. The whopping budget rise is also a
Manchester (United Kingdom) (AFP) – Carrying placards reading “End austerity now” and “Cut war not welfare”, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Manchester as British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party opened its annual conference on Sunday. Police and
As Greece braces for parliamentary elections on September 20, ruling Radical Left party Syriza finds itself slipping in the polls and possibly handing the nation back to the center-right, chasing an ever-elusive youth vote.
In a televised address to his people, he said he had a moral duty to resign, because he was elected (just over half a year ago!) as a staunch opponent of the austerity measures he now believes it necessary to impose, in order to keep Greece in the Euro and secure its future.
One of the terms of Greece’s bailout deal involves selling off government monopolies and privatizing their operations.
On Wednesday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras floated the idea of calling for early elections in Greece to “bolster a parliamentary majority that has been strained by bailout reforms demanded by creditors,” as Reuters put it. Such is the chaos of end-state socialism in Greece that Tsipras really needs his own party to lose in those early elections. The Syriza party is coming unglued over the austerity components of Greece’s latest bailout package.
There was speculation Wednesday that the International Monetary Fund’s disapproval of the European Union bailout package for Greece would stiffen resistance in the Greek Parliament against it, but in the end, they voted in agreement with what Reuters describes as “sweeping austerity measures demanded by lenders to open talks on a new multibillion-euro bailout package to keep Greece in the euro.”
Stocks rallied on Monday amid news that the Greek financial crisis was under control, and a bailout deal had been agreed upon, but that might have been a hasty celebration.
The seemingly final deadline for serious Greek proposals in the debt showdown was Friday morning, and some paperwork was indeed delivered on schedule, inducing some optimism that a Greek exit from the Euro would be averted. Depending on who you ask, the deal is either a stunning triumph or disastrous capitulation for either Greece or its creditors.
China is teetering on the edge of a 1929-style stock market meltdown, and Greece might be about to exit the Euro. China is worried about what the Grexit, or an even larger collapse of the Euro, might do to its house-of-cards stock market. Everybody else is worried about what a Chinese collapse could do to their markets, especially since Western socialists have sold so much of their own nations to China over the years.
As the financial crisis in Greece worsens, more and more sectors of the Greek economy are taking hits, including the health care system. Greece has a socialized health care system and now that the government is running out of money, so are hospitals.
Socialism is having its moment here in America, even as socialism abroad is collapsing in disarray.
Yesterday, as Greece’s debt negotiations entered a new hard-core round of brinkmanship mistaken by many observers for conciliatory gestures to Europe, observers warned that if Greece ultimately succeeds in squeezing more money out of its European creditors without making the necessary “austerity” concessions, their triumphant irresponsibility could go viral.
Vladimir Putin is reportedly reaching out to Greek leaders to try to affect the outcome of the recent crisis. On Sunday, Greek voters once again defied European leaders and voted against approving new austerity measures.
As Greece breaks apart on the rocky shores of the European Union, the man who did so much to run his nation’s finances aground has decided to call it quits. The New York Times sees the sudden resignation of “combative” Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis as a gesture of “conciliation” between the socialist Syriza government and a thoroughly fed-up European Union, but it might be premature to talk about Greece making peace with its creditors.
In the wake of the growing financial crisis, thousands of Greek nationals are fleeing their homeland. Tens of thousands have ended up in Australia. It is the largest wave of migration from Greece to Australia since hundreds of thousands fled the march of fascism in World War II.
The new socialist government of Greece is not having much success convincing its European creditors to forget about billions of dollars in debt, and then loan Greece even more money. Bloomberg News reports Commerzbank AG is doubling the odds of a Greek exit from the Eurozone to 50 percent, which sounds like a polite underestimation of the odds, given the sudden and acrimonious end of the latest debt talks.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose socialist administration has been a staunch supporter of the radical leftist anti-austerity parties rising to prominence in Greece and Spain, claimed on a national broadcast last week that Greek PM ‘Comrade Alexis’ Tsipras has agreed to visit Venezuela and several other socialist Latin American nations.
Spanish Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro has categorically rejected any attempts to “change the rules” regarding austerity measures imposed on Greece by European Union regulations. “Europe is a club of democracies, and entering is voluntary,” he stated, implying that, should Greece’s new government refuse to impose austerity measures, they can leave the EU.
This week, Palestine’s Islamist Hamas movement congratulated the head of Greece’s newly-elected, far-left Syriza coalition on his party’s victory and hailed him for his staunch opposition to “Israeli crimes, aggression, and siege on Gaza.”
The White House announced Thursday morning that President Barack Obama wants Congress to “fully reverse” bipartisan sequester spending limits by boosting domestic and defense spending by $70 billion in an effort to “end the era of manufactured crises and mindless austerity.”
