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Greece wildly overcommits in spending on its welfare state, spending the country to the brink of collapse and then failing to live up to the terms of not one but two IMF bailouts, both of which were heavily financed by Germany I don’t even know what to do with this. If you ever help anyone with a problem, don’t expect to get credit for it from the Washington Post. Because it might be necessary for you to make the recipient of the help shed some bad habits, and if you do that . . . hey, remember how cruel Hitler...

People have become herds of cattle and statistics to tax-rich governments and bureaucracies Any country whose financial problems leave thousands of elderly pensioners having to queue up in front of banks is an abysmal failure. Any system that doesn’t put vulnerable pensioners first is heartless. Governments worldwide and their bureaucracies continue to treat people like cattle. For all of their hype as saviours, the European Union is über government. Ditto for the out-of-control United Nations, whose bumper sticker approach of “saving humanity” is a decades-old farce. People have become herds of cattle and statistics to tax-rich governments and bureaucracies.

If I were negotiating this deal on behalf of the IMF and the EU, one term I would demand is the resignation of the socialist government It’s the third bailout of Greece in five years. Heck, even Chrysler must be appalled at a performance like that. And while we’re still waiting for the details, early reports indicate that Greece’s socialist government had to accept much more stringent terms than the ones they told Greek voters to reject just last week. It’s easy just telling everyone yes to whatever they want until you run out of stuff to give them. That’s...

<p>Jeb Bush apparently doesn’t want people to know that he worked at Lehman Brothers, the now-defunct investment bank whose collapse led to the broader financial meltdown in 2008.</p> <p>That’s the only conclusion I can come to after receiving a series of occasionally bizarre emails from his press people to what I thought was a fairly simple question about Bush’s work before he became a Republican presidential candidate.</p>

It would appear that the insiders at General Motors do not have as rosy a view on the financial outlook for the company as they would have the rest of the public believe. The well-paid executives at GM sold out of another $2.8 million worth of shares in June according to Yahoo Financial statistics. Of course, the sales of shares are pure profits for the higher-ups at GM, considering that the elite group of executives receive millions of dollars’ worth of GM shares for free through stock options. So, what have the highly-paid executives at GM done to earn...

Puerto Rico has two very powerful allies in its debt drama: Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Both 2016 presidential candidates support giving Puerto Rico the same legal bankruptcy rights that states have. Puerto Rico's governor has been lobbying hard for the change to help deal with the commonwealth's $73 billion debt. There's a bill in Congress to give Puerto Rico what it wants, but it has no co-sponsors. That's why Bush and Clinton's backing could be key. "I think that Puerto Rico ought to be treated as other states are treated as it relates to restructuring," Bush said during a...

"I voted with my heart and also my mind," said Marie Triadafillou, who works in transportation logistics and voted yes. "I believe when you are in a union you cannot leave. We say in our country if the sheep leaves the flock it cannot live." ...Martin Schulz, the head of the European Parliament, who had offered at one point to come to Greece to campaign for a yes vote, said on Sunday that Greece would need to prepare to operate without the euro and with a parallel currency if there was a no vote on Sunday. While Greece would remain...

On Monday, after Greek PM Alexis Tsipras’ dramatic referendum call sparked a run on Greek ATMs, grocery stores, and gas stations, we did our part to help ameliorate the situation by sending a subtle message to Athens: Dear Greece, if you want to apply for a loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, send an email to: information@aiibank.org— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 28, 2015 Indeed, now may be an opportune time to tap Beijing for a few billion given that China officially launched the AIIB this week. As a reminder, the success of China’s AIIB membership drive was a political disaster...

The Greek parliament is in session on Saturday evening as lawmakers debate the country's EMU fate and vote on the referendum called by PM Alexis Tsipras just after midnight this morning. TSIPRAS SAYS REFERENDUM WILL BE MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR CREDITORS TSIPRAS: GREEK PROPOSAL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEAL STILL ON TABLE TSIPRAS SAYS REFERENDUM NOT MEANT AS RUPTURE WITH EUROPE TSIPRAS SAYS GAME OF BAILOUT HAS COME TO AN END GREEK PARLIAMENT TO RESUME IN 10 MIN AHEAD OF REFERENDUM VOTE SAMARAS SAYS REFERENDUM DRAGS COUNTRY OUT OF EUROPE SAMARAS SAYS CREDITORS DISCUSSING PLAN B FOR GREECE STATE MINISTER PAPPAS SAYS...

urozone finance ministers refused Saturday to extend Greece's bailout programme past June 30 after Athens called a referendum on reform proposals by creditors, sources told AFP. The ministers "rejected an extension of the aid programme" at a meeting in Brussels, hours after Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called the plebiscite on the bailout proposal for July 5.

Either Greece’s banks will open on Monday and Christos Dranos’s butcher’s shop will still be in business. Or they won’t and his shop and the country’s ties to the Euro will be in serious peril.... Greece’s banks suffered a €4.2 billion ($5.8 billion) run last week ahead of an emergency European Union summit called for Monday in Brussels on the country’s deepening debt crisis and the continuing standoff between Athens and its foreign creditors.... A continuing rush for cash at ATM machines over the weekend suggests that panic has already set in. But beaches and coffee shops in Athens were...

Donald Trump may be the man America needs. Having been through four bankruptcies, the ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula is uniquely positioned to lead the most indebted organization in the history of the human race.The Trump conglomerate is the Argentina of limited-liability companies,having been in bankruptcy as recently as 2009. To be sure,a lot of companies went bankrupt around then. The Trump gang went bankrupt in 2004,too,and in 2001. Before that, Trump was in bankruptcy court back in 1991 when his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City—the nation’s first casino-cum-strip-club, an aesthetic crime against humanity that is...

While it has been an open secret for several years that Donald Trump was once a heavy Democratic donor, a deeper analysis of campaign records shows that the real estate billionaire’s contributions skewed even further left during the 2006 mid-term election, the crucial contest that put Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in power and arguably helped pave the way for Barack Obama’s political agenda.Between 1989 and 2010, The Donald gave $314,300 to Democratic groups and candidates and $290,600 to Republicans, according to a Daily Caller analysis of records maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.But Trump’s donation gap was even...

According to Donald Trump, a 2016 ticket of Trump for president and Oprah Winfrey for vice president would be a lock for the White House. "I think Oprah would be great. I'd love to have Oprah," Trump told ABC News. "I think we'd win easily, actually."

RUSH: Well, well, well, well, Snerdley and I just spent the last half hour sitting here watching Donald Trump's announcement that he's going to run for president, and we were laughing ourselves silly. I mean, it was a howl session. But, at the same time, there's no doubt in my mind -- I'll tell you what this is shaping up to be. For those of you who have the long-term memory and in this for the long game, think Perot. Think Ross Perot. Remember the reaction people had to Ross Perot. And I'm not comparing Trump's speech. Perot got going...

Donald Trump has lined up three New York hedge funds, including money from billionaire George Soros, to invest $160 million in his Chicago skyscraper, a key piece in perhaps the largest construction financing in the city's history, according to real estate sources and public documents. -snip- On Wednesday Trump declined to comment on the financing, emphasizing instead the luxury project's record-breaking sales.

Earlier today, former AIG head Hank Greenberg's long-running legal battle of the US government came to a dramatic end when in a 75-page ruling, U.S. Court of Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler found that Greenberg was indeed correct in claiming the government overstepped its legal boundaries in its "unduly harsh treatment of AIG in comparison to other institutions" which was "misguided and had no legitimate purpose." But because “the question is not whether this treatment was inequitable or unfair, but whether the government’s actions created a legal right of recovery for AIG’s shareholders" Wheeler found that Greenberg was not owed any...

A court ruled Monday that the federal government was “unduly harsh” in its takeover of AIG during the financial crisis, but refused to award the company’s former head any damages. The ruling draws to a close the high-profile lawsuit against the federal government, brought by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the former head of the insurance giant, and other AIG shareholders under the umbrella of Starr International. In his ruling, Judge Thomas Wheeler determined the federal government violated the Constitution by stepping in and effectively seizing the insurance company during the crisis, even if the takeover was intended to save the company...

The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has concluded that there was criminal wrongdoing by General Motors as the company covered-up a deadly ignition switch defect for years. That defect has now been blamed for causing the deaths of at least 104 motorists. While many observers may have been able to come to the conclusion that GM was guilty long before the Justice Department’s recent epiphany, the bigger question now is, what’s next? GM still faces litigation risks as ongoing lawsuits seek justice for the victims’ families that suffered as a result of GM’s criminal actions. Full...

Today, we requested that the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform undertake an "independent" investigation of the General Motors ignition switch recall delay, in light of newly obtained emails by lawyers suing GM. Those emails suggest that the Treasury may have timed its final sale of GM shares to precede public knowledge of the ignition switch fiasco. They also cast doubt on GM CEO Mary Barra's previous account of what she knew and when she knew it. Here is the text of a letter I sent today to Rep. Jason Chaffetz, in photo, the incoming Chairman of the...