bailout - Page 2

Speaker Pelosi 2.0, offers a do-nothing, tax-and-spend Congress, whose agenda will be to remove Trump — by impeachment if possible, by election if necessary. 

Capitol Hill conservatives are trying to regroup after Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R.-Wis.) agreed to a plan with President Barack Obama and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) to put the severely debt-addled territory Puerto Rico into a congressionally-managed receivership.

The insurance division of Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health is pressing a $223 million lawsuit against the federal government, seeking partial reimbursement of a vast sum it lost on the ObamaCare exchanges, plus interest and legal expenses.

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) is a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would, very broadly speaking, allow Puerto Rico to cancel nearly half of its $72 billion debt, in exchange for surrendering much control over its fiscal affairs to an independent financial control board.

Ted Cruz reacted to the recent attacks from his Republican presidential opponent Donald Trump yesterday in an interview with talk radio host Mark Levin.

When America’s largest insurance provider, UnitedHealth Group, announced disastrous losses due to ObamaCare and started talking about exiting from the program last week, I wondered if they, along with other companies grumbling about ObamaCare red ink, might be looking for a bailout.

The newly elected conservative government of Portugal is at risk of being toppled just 11 days after taking office. The President has warned that, were that to happen, Portugal will be “uncontrollable”. Portugal shows striking signs of following Greece down the

Greeks are getting around what is delicately described as a “liquidity problem”—i.e. no money—by bringing back the barter system. It even has an Information Age twist: a bartering website with its own virtual currency system, and thousands of users.

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.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of the socialist Syriza party will reportedly step down and call for snap elections on September 20, rocking his already crisis-riddled nation with fresh wave of political turmoil. A formal announcement of his resignation is expected Thursday afternoon, along with a televised address to the Greek people.

In a very long piece on former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in the New Yorker, the former head of the nation’s economy admits to being surprised both by the Greek people’s rejection of an austerity deal and the Prime Minister’s acceptance of one.

One of the terms of Greece’s bailout deal involves selling off government monopolies and privatizing their operations.

The Greek stock market was shut down five weeks ago, as the nation spiraled into an economic and political crisis, facing its final debt showdown with European creditors. The market just concluded its first day of trading since the shutdown, and the outlook is grim: the market lost 16.2 percent of its value on the first day back in business.

The effort to relieve, or bail out, the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico from its current economic struggles has just received a big boost from the Obama administration.

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.”

There has been trouble brewing between the International Monetary Fund and the European Union about the vast debts Greece owes to both of them, but rhetorical shots were finally fired on Wednesday, as the IMF offered stiff criticism of the EU’s bailout deal with Greece.

After 17 hours of “extremely hard, violent even” negotiations concluded in Brussels on Monday, a third Greek bailout – a three-year plan worth some €86 billion – appeared secure. Then doubt began to emerge. Most centred on whether Prime Minister Tsipras

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.

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.

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 Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) decided Wednesday to increase compensation for CEOs at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – government sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

It has been a difficult week for Greece, whose as-of-yet insurmountable debt to the European Union and International Monetary Fund continues unpaid and with little hope of preventing a default.

The Eurozone rejected Greece’s request for one-month bailout extension only a day after the bankrupt country turned down an extension offer from their creditors. “It looks like we are heading for Grexit,” exclaimed one person who participated in the meetings.

The long standoff between intransigent Greek socialists and their increasingly exasperated creditors appears to be reaching an end, judging by the commentary after an International Monetary Fund meeting this week. It sounds as if the Greeks are running out of cards to play.

With the strike ban that was a pre-condition of the GM and Fiat Chrysler federal bailouts expiring, United Auto Workers (UAW) locals are collecting food and encouraging union members to save for a potential strike when the Big Three four-year labor agreement expires on September 14.

The eleventh-hour decision to extend Greece’s bailout a few weeks ago turns out to have been an even closer shave than it seemed at the time, with Reuters reporting that a massive revolt among German conservatives left the vote “hanging by a thread,” as one German legislator put it. Escalating tensions between sullen Greece and fed-up Germany could make the votes on further bailout extensions or new financing deals even tighter.

Greece’s new socialist government appears to have given up on its demands for debt relief without spending controls, at least for the time being.

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.