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Greek Tragedy - New York Times

A stubborn standoff is playing out this week between a nearly bankrupt Greece and the wrongheaded European partners it needs to pay its bills. The outcome is, sadly, foreordained. ...

How Europe Might Get Its Groove Back - A.A. Gill, Bloomberg

They discovered another Mona Lisa at the Prado in Madrid, just hanging about in the stock room. “What do you think that is?” asked some Spanish curator. “Let’s clean it an...

Greece Should Take the Money and Run - Alen Mattich, The Euro Crisis

It looks like the European Central Bank has crumbled with respect to the Greek rescue, making it increasingly likely Greece will get the long delayed wedge of international loans. ...

The Upside of Greece's Devastating Debt Crisis - Chicago Tribune

Tough as they are, the terms being offered to Greece in many ways amount to a gift: In exchange for accepting strict fiscal discipline that will help Greece to recover on a firm f...

Time to End Greek Rescue Farce - Stefan Kaiser, Der Spiegel

For the past two years, Greece has wrangled with the euro-zone states and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over its so-called "rescue." Austerity measures have been agreed to...

Why It Won't Be a Tragedy if Greece Defaults - Mark Sheetz, Foreign Policy

European leaders are working around the clock to prevent a Greek default -- as if they had a choice....

Euro Politicians Prolong Greek Tragedy - Dalibor Rohac, National Review

However flawed Greece's economy and political system might be, it would ill-advised to hand it sole blame for the present crisis. The crisis is a consequence of the utopian overr...

Let's Rebuild Greece Like Post-War Japan - Nathan Lewis, Forbes

In 1949, Japan was a wreck. Four years had passed since the end of World War II, but the economy was still moribund. The major cities, flattened and burned during the war, remained...

Greece's Real Challenge - Katinka Barysch, Centre for European Reform

The German idea of sending Athens a 'budget commissioner' was daft. Berlin itself could not tolerate such interference in its fiscal sovereignty (the constitutional court wo...

Israel's New Allies - Benny Morris, The National Interest

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Greek Cyprus this month in what will be the first ever visit by an Israeli leader to the neighboring Mediterranean i...

Euro Debt Crisis Now Belongs to Germany - George Friedman, Stratfor

Germany must have a free-trade zone in Europe. Germany also needs robust demand in Europe. Germany also wants prudence in borrowing practices. And Germany must not see a return t...

European Politicians in Denial as Greece Unravels - Der Spiegel

Martial music booms from the loudspeakers as warlike images gallop across monitors. A short euro crisis film montage shows police officers being posted in front of the parliament ...

Europe's Diverging Basket Cases - Pierpaolo Barbieri, The New Republic

Though the continent's collected prime ministers will no doubt again pledge to do all that's within their powers to preserve the grandeur of the European Union when they meet today...

The Eurozone's Strategy of Pain - Jean Pisani-Ferry, Project Syndicate

For the third year in a row, the eurozone is the weakest link in the world economy. In 2010, attention was focused on responses to the crisis on the eurozone periphery – Greece,...

Consequences of Hard Bargaining With Greece - Washington Post

As Europe goes, so may go the U.S. and global economies. Europe's fate, in turn, hinges on what happens in Greece, whose debt crisis triggered the broader predicament of the euro...

Europe to Greece: Cut a Deal or No Bailout - Patrick Smith, Fiscal Times

After the historic, defend-the-euro deal cut among European Union members last month, the question now seems to be who, if anyone, will blink first—political leaders in Greece a...

Greece: Civilization in Reverse - Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem todiscount. News accounts abo...

Scotland Could Be the Next Greece - Martin Hutchinson, Asia Times

The thought of great names from the past, such as Adam Smith and David Hume, may puff up the courage of present-day Scots urging independence, but economic and political facts sugg...

America, Greece and a World on Fire - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

It took an economic crisis in Greece in 1947 to force the US to assume world leadership. Now, more than 60 years later, another Greek crisis is showing what the world feels like wi...

Watch the Greeks, Not Ratings Agencies - Buttonwood's Notebook

WHILE the big headlines over the weekend were about S&P's downgrades of European countries, the more worrying news came from Greece, where talks on a debt deal broke up. While ...

Is Austria the New Finland? - Centre for European Reform

In August 2010, a newly elected Slovak government refused to contribute to the first Greek bail-out. A year later, the rising popularity of the anti-euro True Finns pushed the Finn...

Republicans Bash Europe in Search of Votes - Sebastian Fischer, Der Spiegel

Europe is socialist, bloated and a threat to the global economy. That appears to be the message from the ongoing presidential campaign in the U.S. Republicans in particular have ...

Doubts Grow on Greek Debt Restructuring - Böll, Hesse & Heyer, Der Spiegel

The outlook for cash-strapped Greece is looking increasingly bleak. Government reforms are behind target, and negotiations with private creditors over voluntary debt relief are sta...

Greece Heads Toward Default - Wall Street Journal

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told a group of labor-union leaders Wednesday that he expected that a deal on a 50% haircut on Greek government bonds would be sealed within ...

The Danger Debt Poses to the Western World - Alexander Jung, Der Spiegel

Countries around the world, particularly in the West, are hopelessly in the red, with debt rising every day. Even worse, politicians seem paralyzed, unable -- or unwilling -- to ...

2012: Year of Counter-Revolution? - Leon Hadar, Singapore Business Times

The outgoing 2011 is the Year of the Protester, according to Time Magazine. The insurgency targeting the ruling political elites, first in Tunisia, and then in Egypt, Libya, Syria,...

Argentina's Lessons for Crisis-Ridden Europe - Jens Glusing, Der Spiegel

Ten years ago, Argentina's economy was in a shambles, the victim of vast sovereign debt, a peso that was pegged to the US dollar and rigid IMF austerity measures. A decade later,...

Are Greeks Lazy? - Matthew Yglesias, Slate

Europe is a mess because Germans work hard and Greeks are shiftless. False!...

Euro Rescue Is Based on a Lie - Max Hastings, Daily Mail

The leaders of France and Germany — those big bosses of Europe — announced yesterday that they are committed to redraw the continental treaty, what Chancellor Angela Merkel h...

'Fiskalunion' a Bad Idea for Europe - Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph

Be careful of the German term 'Fiskalunion', the next phase of Europe's misadventure. What Chancellor Angela Merkel means is increased powers to police the budgets of EMU sinner st...

Europe Is Killing the Euro - Paul Krugman, New York Times

Although Europe's leaders continue to insist that the problem is too much spending in debtor nations, the real problem is too little spending in Europe as a whole. And their effo...

The Triumphal Failure of Greece - Heinrich Boll Foundation

The Greek crisis is essentially a déjà vu of the subprime loans catastrophe, which hit the US in 2008, leaving the global economy in disarray. The obvious d...

A History of Rich Nations Gone Broke - Jim Powell, Forbes

Government spending drives taxes, deficits, debt and inflation, so it’s at the core of our economic problems. What to do about runaway spending? The tendency is to imagine t...

What's Europe's Last, Best Chance? - Michael Boskin, Project Syndicate

The resignations of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi have highlighted how Greece, Italy, and many other countries obscured for t...

Euro Crisis Is Entirely Avoidable - James Surowiecki, New Yorker

The financial crisis in Europe, seemingly never-ending, has now entered a potentially disastrous phase. With interest rates on Italian and Spanish debt soaring, France looking sh...

Greece Is Broke, and So Is Its Democracy - Michael Walker, Globe and Mail

Democracy rests on a delicate balance of economic interests. Citizens both pay taxes to, and receive benefits from, government which is controlled by the democratic process. Rhet...

NATO Is a Shell of Its Former Self - J.L. Granatstein, Ottawa Citizen

NATO, in other words, is becoming a shell of its former self, a weak, financially wracked alliance that can do little now and even less in the near future. Perhaps it’s tim...

Fear of a German Europe - Joshua Keating, Foreign Policy

This is something of a can't-win situation for Germany. When it approves loans to struggling Southern European countries and imposes conditions on debtor governments, it's accuse...

Modesty and Delusion in the Western World - Roger Cohen, NY Times

Elsewhere it's the Renaissance. Palaces rise. A bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild goes for $4,000 in Hong Kong. Chinese and Brazilian bankers ponder whether Europe is creditwort...

What Really Went Wrong in Greece - Evan Liaras and Harris Mylonas, CNN

After reading about the Greek debt crisis for over a year now, you might think you understand what it’s all about. You’re probably wrong. International media focus on h...

Will Europe's North Pay Politically for South's Mess? - Jeff Simpson, G&M

The southern European countries (and Ireland) have massive current account deficits paid for through the European Central Bank that the northern Europeans have financed. The sums...

The Eurozone Is Too Big to Fail - Guido Westerwelle, Financial Times

Treaty change will require considerable political will. But if we fail to muster the courage to do this now, Europe will remain permanently vulnerable to crisis....

Greece's Haircut - Abraham Newman, Foreign Affairs

Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, the German government has been fixated on the dangers of moral hazard: Berlin has resisted calls to foot the bill for the reckle...

Where Are the Global Deciders? - Thomas Friedman, New York Times

At a time when, from India to America, democracies have never had more big decisions to make, if they want to deliver better living standards for their people, this epidemic of n...

To Put Europe on Track, Try Listening to Voters - Clive Crook, Bloomberg

From now on, Europe should ask governments to surrender sovereignty only when strictly necessary. Starting now, voters must be talked to and heeded. Where integration has gone furt...

Greece

Early Greek Default Now Inevitable

Greeks Ponder Return of Dreaded Drachma

Athens's Choosy Beggars

Greece's Desperate Measures

The Case Against Bailing Out Greece

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