A wakeup call for Greece and the euro. WSJ’s Andy Jordan and Joe Parkinson report from Athens on the threat of a potentially contagious debt crisis and the moral hazard of bailing out a country with bad fiscal habits.
Finally a Realistic Way to Get Debt Relief
A wakeup call for Greece and the euro. WSJ’s Andy Jordan and Joe Parkinson report from Athens on the threat of a potentially contagious debt crisis and the moral hazard of bailing out a country with bad fiscal habits.
To get a firm grip on Europe’s debt, member states have imposed strict austerity measures, with southerners suffering most. As millions of unemployed people in Spain fight over what few jobs there are, the young and talented are heading abroad. RT on Twitter twitter.com RT on Facebook www.facebook.com
The person essentially in charge of Europe’s purse strings says there is no easy fix to the Eurozone’s debt crisis and finding a solution will take years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the region needs a new financial union with stronger controls and debt regulations. Economic analyst Michael Mross, says he agrees with the EU monetary chief, who warned the Eurozone is running out of time to tackle its debt. RT on Twitter twitter.com RT on Facebook www.facebook.com
RT’s Sara Firth talks to Aris Hatzistefanou, author of the documentary “Debtocracy”, who casts doubt on the course EU leaders have chosen, to tackle the debt crisis. RT on Twitter: twitter.com RT on Facebook: www.facebook.com
Brussels is pleased to see that Italy and Greece have changed their governments and picked technocrats to lead their countries through the euro crisis. Related story: www.euractiv.com European leaders have warmed greeted the appointment in Italy of former EU commissioner Mario Monti and of former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos in Greece. Monti made his name as the powerful Competition Commissioner who took on US corporate titans General Electric and Microsoft. Monti blocked plans for one the biggest mergers between two US corporate giants, General Electric and Honeywell, and has imposed massive fine on Microsoft. His technical expertise, sharp intellect and diplomatic skills and his refusal to bow to intense lobbying pressures made him one of the most highly regarded officials the Commission has seen. At the launch of EurActiv Italy last month, Monti argued that there is no crisis of the euro, because the symptoms of a weak currency, inflation and exchange rate, are not there. Instead Europe is going through a public debt and banking crisis, and that, he said, can only be tackled through rigorous structural reforms. While Italy’s problems have pushed the collapse of the much smaller Greek economy backstage, the IMF and European leaders will keep the new Prime Minister Papademos under pressure to implement radical reforms. Polls published in Sunday’s newspapers show Papademos has the support of three in four Greeks.
Is the eurozone bound to fall apart? Who will cling to the euro till the very end? Is the exit strategy becoming as appealing as the entrance strategy once was? Or will the eurozone withstand the threat of contagion? CrossTalking with Karel Lannoo, Claire Hill and Robert Oulds. CT on FB: www.facebook.com
The White House says that Europe is capable of solving its debt crisis but that it must do so quickly.
Greece has enough money to pay pensions, workers’ salaries and bondholders through mid-November, the country’s finance minister said on Tuesday. The statement came as world stock markets slumped on fears of an imminent Greek debt default, which could bring down European banks and trigger another global recession. The Athens Stock Exchange general index tumbled by 6.3 per cent, while the main Europe markets fell almost three per cent. Jonah Hull reports from Athens, Greece’s capital, on how ordinary Greeks are feeling much of the economic pain of the debt crisis.
The German constitutional court has just issued a ruling on the legality of Eurozone bailouts, where it upheld the country’s involvement in multi-billion rescue funds. The decision was anxiously anticipated by debt-ridden states highly dependent on the bailout packages. RT’s Daniel Bushell reports. Meanwhile in Italy and Spain thousands of people hit the streets to protest their governments’ fresh austerity measures.Italy’s 45-billion-euro package welcomed by the EU includes among other things new tax hikes and raising the retirement age for women. And in Spain, the rallies came ahead ofa crucial vote by its Senate on amending the constitution to limit national debt. Unions and rights groups say the debt cap would decimate the welfare system and hurt the most vulnerable. Writer and journalist Miguel-Anxo Murado believes it’s the markets that should be made responsible for Spain’s current predicament, not the people. With the financial turmoil raging around Europe, calls are growing for the worst-hit economies to abandon the euro and return to their old national currencies. But German economic analyst Michael Mross tells RT that the only solution to the crisis is if STRONG economies leave the Eurozone. RT on Twitter: twitter.com RT on Facebook: www.facebook.com
European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet urged eurozone governments on Monday to rapidly implement a rescue package they approved in July to resolve the region’s debt crisis.Duration: 00:32