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Germany will not "pour money into a bottomless pit" and patience with Greece is growing thin ahead of a new election in the Mediterranean country, a conservative member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet was quoted on Saturday as saying. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich told the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper that Germany, Europe's largest economy and the biggest contributor to rescue efforts, is glad to help Greece help itself but expects it to honor its agreements. "We're not willing to pour money into a bottomless pit," he told the newspaper. "Anyone who wants to see help and solidarity from us has to...

Greece wants two mulligans -- like a golfer demanding second chance, a do-over tee shot, times two. The immediate and obvious mulligan is a new national election. The teed-off Greek electorate teed up on May 6, but fractious voters produced a scattershot result. No single party achieved a parliamentary majority. The leaders of Greece's three largest political parties subsequently failed to form a coalition government. Their disagreements are fundamental. During the coalition discussions, the Syriza Party (Coalition of the Radical Left/Unitary Social Movement) announced it would not participate in any government that imposed austerity. Austerity is shorthand for economic reform,...

The European Commission has said it will soon bring forward plans for an economic and political union it says is necessary for the creation of debt-mutualizing eurobonds—one of the most controversial proposed solutions to the current eurozone crisis. "We need to reflect what kind of European union would be required to deepen economic and political integration, for instance so that joint issuance of debt would make sense for all member states sharing the single currency," economics commissioner Olli Rehn told MEPs on Tuesday (22 May). He said the commission would "soon" come up with a "medium to long term roadmap"...

reeks have gone from being big fans of Germans to comparing them to Nazis dead-set on using financial means to establish the "Fourth Reich." What was once the type of exaggeration mostly found in caricatures has now become a genuine, widespread and worrisome belief among Greeks. Stathis Stavropoulos is tired of constantly drawing evil Germans, but he does it again and again, slightly varying the theme each time. In his drawings, the well-known Greek cartoonist has dressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel in sinister-looking uniforms, placed her in a tank and depicted her frightening little Greek boys.

For more than 200 years, the United States has embraced a set of beliefs that set us apart from the rest of the world. We almost universally put faith, family and community at the center of our lives. And we believed that if we lived by the twin values of hard work and determination, anything was possible. Our American virtues became a defining characteristic of our culture and permeated all facets of our lives, beyond just family and work, and included scholarship, the arts, athletics and more. On the smallest scale, we saw these virtues propel immigrant farmers and shopkeepers...

At a G20 summit in Mexico in two days the EU will plead for increased IMF contributions by non-euro countries to help shore up a eurozone "financial firewall" seen as vital to protecting Spain and Italy from Greek debt contagion. The IMF will refuse to make extra cash available to the EU and will threaten to pull the plug on its contribution to Tuesday's €130bn bailout of Greece unless the eurozone creates a €750bn fund, a move opposed by Germany. In the wake of this week's deal to prevent a Greek default, Olli Rehn, the EU's economic and monetary affairs...

I am not going to speculate about anything this morning. No guesses about what the Finance Ministers might do on Monday, no simple addition or subtraction that the data used to forecast Greece’s return to a 120% debt to GDP ratio is a falsification of the numbers, no mention that only nineteen cents of any bailout for Greece would actually go to the country; I am not going to discuss anything except what the European Central Bank has actually done and what we now know with a one hundred percent (100%) certainty and the horrifying implications of their actions. The...

Europe’s key powers are on the brink of a €130bn (£108bn) debt deal to rescue Greece and avert the first sovereign default in Western Europe in over half a century. Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble toned down threats to force Greece out of the euro, bowing to intense pressure from France, Italy, and the US-led bloc of global leaders. Mr Schäuble said the country is "on the right path" and signalled that pension cuts agreed by the Greek cabinet over the weekend would be enough to secure approval for the loan package from EU ministers on Monday. "If Greece can...

Greece’s unemployment bomb detonated. The surge in job losses since last summer is shocking even for those who never believed that combined fiscal and monetary contraction could lead to any result other than ruin. In November alone 126,000 Greeks lost their jobs in a country of 11 million, equivalent to three and a half million Americans in a single month. The unemployment rate jumped from 18.2pc to 20.9pc.This has not yet led into social breakdown. Greeks receive unemployment support for an average of thirty weeks, with a ceiling of €454 a month. Those with civil service tenure are placed on...

The Financial Times reports Athens passes demanded austerity bill. Greek lawmakers on Thursday approved a tough austerity package aimed at averting a default, but the vote was overshadowed by violent street protests in central Athens and dozens of arson attacks against shops and banks. The legislation passed by 199 votes in favour to 74 against, a convincing majority for Lucas Papademos, the caretaker prime minister who has been given the job of pushing through painful reforms demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in return for a second €130bn bail-out.Athens Burning: Tens of Banks in Flames From...

Greece: once the origin of Western civilization. Now, a burned-down debt penal colony owned by Goldman Sachs... There is a silver lining to Athens' ever uglier transition to a third world country: the massive GDP boost that awaits it as it sets off to fix broken windows and burned down buildings. In fact, we eagerly await Krugman's OpEd praising some of the more recent developments out of Greece in the past 48 hours. Granted, the country will need to get even more bailout funding from the Troika for said GDP boost to occur, but who cares about details anymore. From...

The Troika went to bail out Europe's banks (for the nth time) and all we got was this postcard of night time Athens...

Legislation will allow country to cut debt; protesters set fire to 34 buildings; deputies expelled for opposing vote The Greek parliament approved on Monday a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund and avoid a messy default. The vote occurred after 100,000 demonstrators marched to the parliament and buildings were burned down in central Athens. Following the vote, black-masked protesters created a wall of fire with petrol bombs and set fire to cinemas, cafes, shops and banks. Fifty police officers and at least 55 protesters were hospitalized. Forty-five suspected rioters...

Greece's grim trade-off: Impose deeper spending cuts or abandon euro and default on debts Why would Greece accept more pain when unemployment is at 21 percent, the economy is enduring its fifth year of recession and rioters are hurling gasoline bombs in the streets of Athens? Because the alternative might be worse. Greek leaders are gritting their teeth as they move forward with a plan to further slash spending in return for a bailout of about $172 billion (€130 billion) from other countries in Europe and around the world. The Greek Parliament is scheduled to vote on the plan Sunday....

ATHENS (Reuters) - Historic cinemas, cafes and shops went up in flames in central Athens on Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the public rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal. As parliament prepared to vote on a new 130 billion euro bailout to save Greece from a messy bankruptcy, a Reuters photographer saw the buildings engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky. The air over Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought running battles with youths...

ATHENS (Reuters) - The Greek parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country. Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens as black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament. State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were looted in the capital where police said 34 buildings were ablaze. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos denounced the worst breakdown of order...

The last time Germany needed a bail-out from world creditors, it secured better terms than shattered Greece last week. The austerity policy being forced on Greece by Germany and the eurozone cannot command democratic consent over time The US, Canada, Britain, France, Greece, and other signatories at the London Debt Agreement of 1953 granted Chancellor Konrad Adenauer a 50pc haircut on all German debt, worth 70pc in relief with stretched maturities. There was a five-year moratorium on interest payments. The express purpose was to give Germany enough oxygen to rebuild its economy, and to help hold the line against Soviet...

Debt-stricken Greece does not have the money to cover a (euro) 14.5 billion bond repayment on March 20, and must reach a vital debt-relief deal with private bond investors before then. Papademos said the bailout and the deal with private creditors would return Greece to growth next year, and deliver a 4.5 percent primary surplus in 2012 -- better than an earlier official prediction of 1.1 percent of gross domestic product. "A disorderly default would cast our country into a catastrophic adventure. It would create conditions of uncontrollable economic chaos and social explosion," he warned. "Greeks' standard of living in...

The coalition government has been thrown into crisis after six cabinet members quit over renewed European demands for more economic austerity. Laos four ministers - Transport Minister Makis Voridis, Alternate Defence Minister Georgios Georgiou, Deputy Shipping Minister Adonis Georgiadis and Deputy Rural Development and Food Minister Asterios Rondulis - announced their resignations after party leader Yiorgos Karatzaferis said he would vote against the new austerity measures, that cuts deep into the minimum wage and other private sector pay. Deputy Foreign Minister Mariliza Xenoyiannakopoulou, a Pasok MP, also resigned her post on Friday. "They are trying to impose measures that will...

On a crisp, cold day last month, Inaya, an unemployed former Ikea manager, waited with about 100 people in a large, dingy hall at Credit Municipal de Paris to pawn a Gucci bag and some jewelry. Out of work for two years, Inaya, 35, sporting a tweed jacket and dark pants, was tapping the broker for cash for the first time as her unemployment benefits dwindled. "The structure of the French welfare state is such that you don't see acute poverty, but the model has reached its limit," said Philippe Chalmin, a professor at Universite Paris Dauphine. "It's clear France...