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The European Union’s executive Commission said Monday that membership in the euro bloc is “irrevocable” but left it open to what extent Greece could renegotiate the terms after elections on Jan. 25. Greece’s left-wing Syriza party leads the polls ahead of the elections and is in favor of changing the conditions of the country’s international bailout deal. That would likely anger the rest of the eurozone, which has given Athens the bulk of the rescue loans. […] EU spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said Monday that if the Greek elections call for a need to reconsider the conditions of Athens’ membership within...

Further compounding president Francois Hollande's problem with the European Commission Rejection of France's Proposal for Deficit Target Leniency, the socialists are in open revolt against new Prime Minister Manuel Valls. The socialists consider Valls as too pro-business. They want less austerity and a reduction in personal taxes, not corporate taxes. And they are against Hollande's "responsibility pact" proposal that would reduce labor costs and cut government spending. Via translation from Les Echos, please consider Socialist MPs Threaten a Vote of No Confidence on Account of Valls Nearly a hundred of Socialist deputies signed a document calling for political change of...

GET INVOLVED Email:* Zip Code: *Required Privacy Policy Email Print Tuesday, February 25, 2014 6:20 PM EST John Kartch Related Items Grover Norquist discusses the Obamacare Cover Up Obamacare Exchanges Enroll Only 51,000 Uninsured Americans The Obamacare Signup Cover-up Daily Media Spotlight for August 15, 2013 Read More IRS Warns: Obamacare Tax Must Be Paid with Tax Return Agency employs Orwellian term “Shared Responsibility Payment” to describe Obamacare individual mandate tax. President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service today quietly released a series of Obamacare “Health Care Tax Tips” warning Americans that they must obtain “qualifying” health insurance – as defined by...

The next Great Depression is already happening - it just hasn't reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don't get it. All the time I have people ask me when the "economic collapse" is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S....

The chances of Britain leaving the EU rose dramatically last night after it emerged that one of David Cameron’s closest Cabinet allies believes it is time to tell Brussels bluntly: “We are ready to quit.” Education Secretary Michael Gove has told friends that, if there was a referendum today on whether the UK should cut its ties with Brussels, he would vote to leave. He wants Britain to give other EU nations an ultimatum: “Give us back our sovereignty or we will walk out.” …

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has said EU institutions need more power over member states to fight the crisis. Speaking on Saturday (1 September) in The Hague at a meeting of constitutional court judges organized by Yale University, he called for a "European renewal" and for a further "leap" of integration. "We are experiencing a situation in which we need greater unity and coherence between our policies, as well as greater legislative harmonization ... We need greater institutional integration. We need to consolidate a transnational order that through shared sovereignty guarantees the protection of our citizens," he said. …

French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes. One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless. ‘Many of those evicted will be flown home to Romania,’ said an interior ministry source, who insisted the deportations...

Another week, another summit. This week's shindig of EU leaders in Brussels will be bound to focus on efforts to shore up the euro. Once again, it is likely to disappoint. The main issue is well-known; bail-outs for indigent, non-tax-paying southerners at the expense of hard-working northerners. The form book tells us that even if they come up with something, the proffered solution will be too little, too late. But the real issue goes deeper. All the bailout mechanisms under the sun cannot make the euro-zone work. Such bailouts are still, in the end, loans. Even if the interest rates...

Europe plunged deeper into crisis last night as Spain lurched closer to needing a full-blown bailout to save it from collapse. The government in Madrid was forced to pay prohibitively high interest rates to borrow money on another bruising day for the single currency bloc. It raised fears that Spain is on the verge of becoming the biggest victim of the euro crisis so far – following the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Please read the rest at the source

Europe's leaders have vowed to mobilise all possible means to counter the region's escalating crisis after Spain's borrowing costs threatened to spiral out of control. Yields on 10-year Spanish bonds surged to a record high of almost 7.3pc as investors ignored the victory of pro-bailout parties in Greece's elections. The closely-watched two-year yield rocketed by 65 basis points in a matter of hours, signalling a near-total collapse of confidence in Spain's €100bn (£80.3bn) rescue from the EU last week to shore up its banking system. Cristobal Montoro, the economy minister, warned that Spain is now in a "critical" condition and...

EU: Staring down the abyss of isolation offered by the far left, Greece's voters had the sense to pull back, electing a pro-bailout center-right party in Sunday's vote and staying in the euro. But are they ready for real austerity? As surprising and relieving as it was to see Greeks vote for the New Democracy party which took 29.4% of the votes in Sunday's multiparty election, the result is the best of bad alternatives. Voting in New Democracy for a second time since the government failed in May bought time, but the real issue is whether Greece has the will...

snip.... Old News and Current Events: I have written before that the fundamentals of the Euro and European Union didn’t bode well. They still don’t. Each step of these “rescues”, Iceland in 2008, Ireland in 2009, Portugal in 2011, Italy and Greece in 2011 and 2012….and now Spain ….are all just shocking the dying patient back to life for a few more moments of pain and chaos. The inevitable and permanent straight-line on the EKG is coming. It will be a collapse of the Euro and a financial crisis of a size not seen since WWII or the Great Depression....

From the Chinese buying spree to the rise of extremism, here's what to watch for as the continent teeters on the brink of disaster. Two short years ago, if anyone had suggested that we would be considering pan-European bank regulation, cross-border deposit guarantees, joint and several Eurobonds, and the very survival of the common currency, they would have been dismissed as nothing short of crazy. But what was unthinkable then appears to be verging on the inevitable now. With last weekend's announcement of a bailout for Spanish banks and with potentially euro-shaking elections in Greece this weekend, we can now...

Greeks are pulling cash out of banks, stocking up on food in panic ahead of make-or-break election Sunday Dina Kyriakidou and George Georgiopoulos, Reuters Jun 13, 2012 – 8:41 AM ET ATHENS — Greeks pulled their cash out of the banks and stocked up with food ahead of a cliffhanger election on Sunday that many fear will result in the country being forced out of the euro. Bankers said up to 800 million euros (US$1 billion) were leaving major banks daily and retailers said some of the money was being used to buy pasta and canned goods, as fears of...

It Starts: The Government’s Plan To Steal Your Money. Simon Black June 12, 2012 New York City There are consequences to being flat broke. There are consequences to investing any level of confidence in a financial system underpinned by debt and the creation of paper currency. There are consequences for ignoring reality and pretending that everything is normal.This is one of them: European officials yesterday flat out admitted that they were discussing rolling out a series of harsh capital controls across the continent, including bank withdrawal limits and closing down Europe’s borderless Schengen area. Some of these measures have already...

Another day, another sticking plaster solution from beleaguered eurozone policymakers. Only this one may not even succeed in buying time – I give it less than a month before some such other piece of bad news comes along to fire the crisis anew. Like all the others, the latest fix seems to create as many problems as it solves. The euphoria in markets at Spain's rescue lasted all of a few hours; having bounded away at the opening, they ended broadly flat. But please don't call it a bail-out. It may walk, talk and look like a bail-out, but to...

In a television interview, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the eurozone was moving inevitably towards a "political union" requiring nations to cede more sovereignty, and that would lead to more of a multi-speed Europe with non-euro states in the slow lane.“We need more Europe, we need not only a monetary union, but we also need a so-called fiscal union, in other words more joint budget policy,” Merkel told ARD on Thursday (7 June). “And we need most of all a political union—that means we need to gradually give competencies to Europe and give Europe control,” she added. European Council President...

The European Commission is threatening to use EU competition rules to close down the failing Greek, Spanish and Portuguese banks that have pushed the eurozone into a new crisis, with Greece's ATEbank the first in its sights. Already in Greece, Spain and the Netherlands, the voters are rejecting austerity – and once they start to link that austerity to eurozone membership, monetary union will collapse quite quickly EU state-aid rules, designed to stop government subsidies distorting competition, give the commission sweeping powers to impose restructuring conditions on bank bailouts or even to block the rescue. Over the past two years,...

The US has joined ranks with EU officials exploring ways to pump eurozone money directly into Spain's troubled banks instead of having to further burden the state budget. "We were talking about the possibility that the banks, not only Spain's but also in other countries who need it, could access funds directly without intervention from the governments and without conditions," said Spanish deputy PM Soraya Saenz de Santamaria after meeting US finance minister Timothy Geithner in Washington on Thursday (31 May). "The treasury secretary indicated that we are working in the same direction and that we must find a solution...

(Reuters) - If Greece left the euro, living standards would plummet, incomes would be slashed by more than half, and inflation and unemployment would skyrocket, the National Bank of Greece warned on Tuesday. In a report released ahead of an election on June 17 that may determine whether the country stays in the single currency, the country's biggest bank said the risk of Athens exiting the euro was no longer just a theoretical possibility, warning that the fallout from such a move would be dramatic. "An exit from the euro would lead to a significant decline in the living standards...