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The euro slipped to a fresh 12-year low against the US dollar on Thursday as the common currency continued to buckle under pressure felt since the European Central Bank launched its massive quantitative easing scheme at the start of the week.

The dollar set fresh multiyear highs against the euro and the yen in Asian trade Tuesday, as market participants bet on the continuing divergence in monetary and economic conditions in the U.S., the eurozone and Japan.

The European Central Bank has hit the launch button on its 1.1 trillion euro ($1.2 trillion) stimulus program by starting to buy government bonds. The chief monetary authority for the 19 countries that use the euro confirmed Monday it had begun the purchases, which aim to make credit cheaper, boost growth and raise inflation. ECB President Mario Draghi had announced the start date last week, sending stocks higher and the euro lower.

Despite the European accord last month to extend a financial lifeline to Greece, Athens is rapidly running out of cash. So it is scrambling to find new, even radical ways to fill the shortfall — including a proposal to recruit citizens and tourists to spy on suspected tax evaders. Greece’s coffers may be empty before the end of this month, as tax receipts shrink and the economy shows signs of lapsing back into recession. Athens officials have hinted they may have trouble repaying or refinancing a total of about 7 billion euros, or $7.7 billion, owed in March to the...

LONDON (AP) — The euro could soon be doing something it's only done a couple of times in its 16-year existence — trading 1-to-1 with the dollar. Europe's single currency has since May been on a downward trajectory against the dollar, mainly because of the divergence in economic performance between the eurozone and the United States. Where the eurozone's recovery from the global financial crisis has been at best anemic, the U.S. economy appears to be going from strength to strength. And that divergence is hurting the euro's fortunes. From $1.40 last spring, it is now trading below $1.10 for...

Europe as an entity and as an ideal is more needed than ever. The individual countries of Europe need the collective power of Europe to assert their interests, influence and values. Yet, as the impasse over Greece confirms, the continent is in crisis. Many assume that some form of compromise is in the offing. Debt can somehow be kicked down the road. The Greek government will bend; the troika of creditors — the EU, ECB and International Monetary Fund — will bend and somewhere in the middle the two will come together. I do not see it. Greece is part...

Is this the beginning of the end for the eurozone? On Thursday, Germany rejected a Greek request for a six-month loan extension. The Germans insisted that the Greek proposal did not require the Greeks to adhere to the austerity restrictions which previous agreements had forced upon them. But Greek voters have already very clearly rejected the status quo, and the new Greek government has stated unequivocally that it will not be bound by the current bailout arrangement. So can Germany and Greece find some sort of compromise that will be acceptable to both of them? It certainly does not help...

Brussels- European leaders agreed on Friday to extend Greece's bailout for four months after weeks of terse negotiations.

Germany has rejected a Greek request for a six-month extension to its eurozone loan programme. The rejection came despite the European Commission calling the Greek request "positive" only minutes earlier. Greece had sought a new six-month assistance package, rather than a renewal of the existing deal that comes with tough austerity conditions. However, a German finance ministry spokesman said it was "not a substantial proposal for a solution".

Greece's pleas to stop the "fiscal waterboarding" of its devastated economy are substantively no different from President Obama's repeated warnings to Germany to stop bleeding the euro area economy with excessive fiscal austerity. Sadly, the president's reportedly more than a dozen phone calls to the German Chancellor Merkel in 2011 and 2012 urging supportive economic policies in the euro area fell on deaf ears. These calls were not just brushed aside; they were plainly ridiculed as Chancellor Merkel kept telling the media that "it made no sense to be adding new debt to old debt." But -- worrying about one-fifth...

For over a fortnight, Europe's single warning to Greece has been that the chaos and misery of national bankruptcy await it unless its new left-wing government changes its anti-austerity tune. The message of impending doom appears to have gone largely unnoticed on the streets of Athens, where a mood of hope and optimism bordering on euphoria reigns as Greeks see themselves finally shaking off foreign shackles to shape their own destiny.

Germany has been sacking Greece and other Mediterranean economies for years, and the Hellenic revolt against austerity is overdue. When the euro was established in 1999, prices were translated from the mark, franc and other currencies into euro at prevailing exchange rates. (Greece joined the Eurozone in 2001, giving up the drachma.) National prices reflected differences in labor costs and efficiency across countries, but owing to a variety of social and demographic conditions, productivity improved more rapidly in Germany and other northern countries. Making goods in the South became too expensive, and Greece and others could no longer export enough...

A Greek exit from the euro would see the euro collapse like a house of cards, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis warned in comments that triggered a spat with Italy. "Greece's exit from the euro is not something that is part of our plans, simply because we believe it is like building a house of cards. If you take out the Greek card, the others will collapse," Varoufakis said in an interview with Italian public broadcaster RAI that was aired on Sunday. Varoufakis also incurred the wrath of his Italian counterpart Pier Carlo Padoan by comparing Italy's problem with its large...

The former head of the US central bank, Alan Greenspan, has predicted that Greece will have to leave the eurozone. He told the BBC he could not see who would be willing to put up more loans to bolster Greece's struggling economy. Greece wants to re-negotiate its bailout, but Mr Greenspan said "I don't think it will be resolved without Greece leaving the eurozone". Earlier, UK Chancellor George Osborne said a Greek exit would cause "deep ructions" for Britain. Mr Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said: "I believe (Greece) will eventually leave. I don't think...

Shares in Greek banks crashed by more than a quarter yesterday as Athens urged Berlin not to go on humiliating a ‘proud nation’. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s new finance minister, issued an extraordinary defiant statement invoking the rise of the Nazis when Germany was crippled by debts between the wars. After a tense meeting with his German counterpart in Berlin, Wolfgang Schaeuble, he declared: ‘We didn’t even agree to disagree.’

Just what the market had hoped would not happen... *ECB SAYS IT LIFTS WAIVER ON GREEK GOVERNMENT DEBT AS COLLATERAL *ECB SAYS IT CAN'T ASSUME SUCCESSFUL CONCLUSION OF GREECE REVIEW What this means simply is that since Greek banks are now unable to pledge Greek bonds as collateral and fund themselves, and liquidity is about to evaporate, the ECB has just given a green light for Greek bank runs... and all the worst parts of the bible (or merely a negotiating move to let Greece see just what kind of chaos this will create). And now finally, after many years...

My breakfast companion looked gloomy. He’d flown into Washington from Vienna the day before. When he deplaned, he found a shocking email waiting for him: a demand from his banker for immediate payment of €12,000. Although a resident of Austria, he had taken a home mortgage in Swiss francs, which carried a lower interest rate than mortgages in euros. But 48 hours before he had arrived in the United States, the Swiss franc had surged by 20 percent against the euro. That currency appreciation had wiped out his equity in the house. His frightened banker wanted a new infusion of...

The eurozone experienced negative inflation for the second month in a row, according to a flash estimate published today (30 January) by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office. Inflation is expected to be at −0.6%, with consumer prices falling further than economists had forecast. The fall represents the biggest decline in prices in the history of the euro. […] The drop was driven by the fall in energy prices (−8.9%, compared with −6.3% in December). […] The deflationary spiral comes as Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is trying to tackle deflation with a policy of...

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Madrid on Saturday in a show of strength by a fledgling radical leftist party, which hopes to emulate the success of Greece's Syriza party in the Spanish general election later this year. Podemos supporters from across Spain converged around the Cibeles fountain Saturday before packing the avenue leading to Puerta del Sol square in what was the party's largest rally to date.