Free Republic

A Greek politician who claimed that Jews “don’t pay taxes” has been elected as Defense Minister, Greek media reported Thursday night, amid already-high concerns over rising anti-Semitism in the country that is only expected to worsen following recent elections. Panos Kammenos of the Syriza party made the comments during an interview with Greek Ant-1 TV, according to New Greek TV, on December 18—just days after the drive-by shooting at the Israeli Embassy in Athens. Local Jewish leaders were outraged at the comments. “It is a disgrace that a leader of a party in Parliament does not know that Greek Jews...

Now that Greece has elected a new prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, he’s announced his first order of business: receive the money owed to them from Germany in part of unpaid World War II reparations, reported The Washington Post. Tsipras is part of the Greek left-wing Syriza party, and, according to the Post, the Syriza party has been “outspoken about the need for Germany to atone for its past in Greece.” In a move symbolic of that sentiment, Tsipras visited the Kaisariani rifle range to honor 200 Greek activists who were murdered by Nazi soldiers in 1944. A two-year-old study estimated...

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Thursday Russia would consider extending financial aid to debt-strapped Greece if Athens were to make a request. “Well, we can imagine any situation, so if such petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece,” he told CNBC. Speculation has grown in recent days that new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ government is at odds with the rest of Europe over sanctions on Russia, and may move closer to Moscow as it seeks to...

The North European power structure has issued stern and inflexible warnings to Greece. Syriza’s triumphant radicals must pay the country’s debts and stick to the letter of the hated `Memorandum’ imposed by creditors. If premier Alexis Tsipras breaches the terms of Greece’s EU-IMF Troika bail-out – signed by earlier leaders under duress, and deemed unjust in Athens – Europe will cut off €54bn of support for the Greek banking system and force the country out of the euro in short order. Europe must not yield to “blackmail,” said Germany’s ZEW institute. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, said the new Syriza...

Obama Expresses Sympathy for New Greek Government By ANDREW ACKERMAN Feb. 1, 2015 President Barack Obama expressed sympathy for the new Greek government as it seeks to rollback its strict bailout regime, saying there are limits to how far its European creditors can press Athens to repay its debts while restructuring the economy. “You cannot keep on squeezing countries that are in the midst of depression. At some point there has to be a growth strategy in order for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed...

<p>Today German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed Greek Diplomatic Offensive Is Failing.</p> <p>Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc in parliament has agreed not to give in to any “bad compromise that “defacto adds up to a debt writedown,” Hans-Peter Friedrich, a deputy leader of the caucus, said in an interview today.</p>

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said that if Greece failed to get a new debt agreement with the euro zone, it could always look elsewhere for help. "What we want is a deal. But if there is no deal - hopefully (there will be) - and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B. Plan B is to get funding from another source," he told Greek television show that ran in to early Tuesday. "It could the United States at best, it could be Russia,...

It is important for clients to be aware of the total amount they paid for day care, and have the day care provider's tax ID number, Social Security number or employer identification number (EIN). A new requirement in 2015, those filing tax returns must bring proof of health insurance, for example Affordable Health Care Act Forms 1099 A, B, or C. Clients should know birth dates for the members of their family. Health Care Marketplace Navigators will be at each tax site to assist families with enrollment in the health insurance marketplace and to answer questions regarding tax credits and...

The political centre across southern Europe is disintegrating. Establishment parties of centre-left and centre-right - La Casta, as they say in Spain - have successively immolated themselves enforcing EMU debt-deflation. Spain's neo-Bolivarian Podemos party refuses to fade. It has endured crippling internal rifts. It has shrugged off hostile press coverage over financial ties to Venezuela. Nothing sticks. The insurrectionists who came from nowhere last year - with Trotskyist roots and more radical views than those of Syriza in Greece - are pulling further ahead in the polls. The latest Metroscopia survey gave Podemos 28pc. The ruling conservatives have dropped to...

At midnight, Greece turns into a pumpkin. The clock is clearly ticking but is this the 10th or 11th hour? Given the eurozone propensity to extend deadline after deadline, it's hard to say precisely what time this is. But we can say Greek Bailout Talks with Europe Break Down. Eurozone finance ministers’ first attempt to grapple with the bailout demands made by the new Greek government broke down in recriminations after the two sides failed even to agree a way to take negotiations forward after six hours of talks in Brussels. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs the...

The Greek liquidity, pardon "cash flow" problems are so bad, not only Zero Hedge, but also Bloomberg has launched a daily maturity tracker of how much money Greece has to pay either to the IMF or to prefund T-Bill rollovers. This is what Bloomberg blasted out earlier today: Greece is preparing for another week of hurdles that ends with a ~EU2b repayment on March 20. Most economists say that it will be difficult for Greece to get past end of March without fresh EU funds. Here’s a timeline of the most important events scheduled this week: Monday, March 16: Greece...

Having previously hinted that they might 'dip' into public pensions funds for some short-term cash to payback The IMF, and then confirming that the plan is to repo that cash from pension cash reserves (raising concerns about how they will unwind the repo - i.e. pay it back); the Greek government finally signed the bill today that enables them to plunder the Greek people's pension funds (for their own good). The massive irony of this bill is the bill enables greek deposits to be fully invested in Greek sovereign bonds... which Tsipras and Varoufakis both admitted today is "unsustainable" and...

Greece's justice minister said on Wednesday he was ready to implement a High Court ruling allowing Athens to seize German state-owned property to compensate victims of a Nazi massacre in a small Greek village. Nikos Paraskevopoulos' comments come against a backdrop of rising tensions between Athens and Berlin as Greece's new leftist government struggles to persuade its European Union partners to renegotiate a 240 billion euro bailout package. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday accused successive German governments of using legal tricks to avoid paying reparations for the brutal Nazi occupation of Greece and said he would support efforts to...

The radical left-led Greek government insisted Tuesday that the debt-ridden country has never been fully compensated by Germany for its brutal World War II Nazi occupation, linking the issue with Greece's fraught bailout negotiations. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said a 1960 reparation deal with Germany did not cover key Greek demands, including payments for wrecked infrastructure, war crimes and the return of a forced loan exacted from occupied Greece.

BEWARE OF THE BAIL_IN The Government tells the banks to grab your assets to fill their coffers when they are insolvent, the way they took GREECE money The Banks are going to call YOUR money UNSECURED DEBT Now, Look at the first paragraph: http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/global-bail-in-plan-could-still-leave-taxpayers-holding-the-bag-1073068-1.html

(CNSNews.com) -- The U.S. has a $210 trillion “fiscal gap” and “may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff told members of the Senate Budget Committee in written and oral testimony on Feb. 25. “The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke,” Kotlikoff testified. “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. "Indeed, it may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece," he said. (See...

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has described his country as the most bankrupt in the world and said European leaders knew all along that Athens would never repay its debts, in blunt comments that sparked a backlash in the German media on Tuesday. A documentary about the Greek debt crisis on German public broadcaster ARD was aired on the same day euro zone finance ministers met in Brussels to discuss whether to provide Athens with further funding in exchange for delivering reforms. "Clever people in Brussels, in Frankfurt and in Berlin knew back in May 2010 that Greece would never...

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...

As analysts were waiting to see how fast the euro reaches parity against the U.S. dollar, one foreign exchange pro told CNBC he saw the common currency dropping even further, with the dollar strengthening another 20 percent. George Saravelos, global co-head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, said the euro could fall to 85 U.S. cents against the greenback.

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.