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With Greece digging around in the couch cushions to try and scrape up €2 billion by Friday in order to make payments to the IMF, the ECB, and Goldman, and with celebrity FinMin Yanis Varoufakis doing his absolute best to sink the entire ship with a series of epic PR faux pas, one is left to wonder just where Athens will turn when Berlin and Brussels finally reach the end of their ropes with what increasingly looks like gross incompetence in the Aegean. We may have gotten the answer to that question today via Reuters: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras...

As the European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet evolved into the EU, we were told a "United States of Europe" was at hand, modeled on the USA. And other countries and continents will inevitably follow Europe's example. There will be a North American Union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and a Latin America Union of the Mercosur trade partnership. In an essay, "The E.U. Experiment Has Failed," Bruce Thornton of Hoover Institution makes the case that the verdict is in, the dream is dead, the EU is unraveling, One Europe is finished. Consider, first, economics. In 2013,...

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 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.

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...

1:43 a.m. Concerns that the Group of 20 industrialized and developed nations may not come up with an effective plan to address Greece's debt problems prodded short-term investors to sell the euro in Asia Friday, sending the currency to its lowest level against the dollar in nearly a year. In morning trade in Japan, the euro dropped to $1.3201, its lowest level since April 30, 2009. Dealers said mounting anxiety that Greece could default on its debt may drag the common currency below $1.3000 next week. The focus throughout Asian trading was on the possible outcome of discussions among top...

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...

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...

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...

There's an excellent post on Keep Talking Greece this evening on the simmering feud between Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and Spanish prime minister Minister Mariano Rajoy. Tsipras made a claim that Rajoy's plan is to "wear down, topple or bring our government to unconditional surrender before our work begins to bear fruit and before the Greek example affects other countries… And mainly before the elections in Spain. ... for obvious political reasons". Spanish foreign minister García Margallo, returned fire with a statement (a lie actually), that “Had Spain not given €32.744 billion to Greece, it could have increased the...

Greece's new currency designs are ready. The green 50 drachma note features Cornelius Castoriadis, the Marxisant philosopher and sworn enemy of privatisation. The Nobel poet Odysseus Elytis - voice of Eastward-looking Hellenism - honours the 200 note. The bills rise to 10,000 drachma, a wise precaution lest there is a hyperinflationary shock as Greece breaks out of its debt-deflation trap at high velocity. The amateur blueprints are a minor sensation in Greek artistic circles. They are only half in jest. Greece's Syriza radicals have signed a fragile ceasefire with the eurozone's creditor powers. Few think this can last as escalating...

The first anti-government rally in Athens turned ugly as anti-authoritarian protesters started to smash the windows of a pastry shop and two jewelry shops and put two vehicles and several garbage bins on fire.

One of the biggest question marks surrounding the Greek negotiation and ultimately, bailout extension, was just how panicked was the Greek population and domestic corporations. Recall that as explained previously, the tension boiled down to this: the Troika did everything in its power to accelerate the bank run in order to crush any negotiating leverage Varoufakis may have; Greece on the other hand was desperate to make its cash drain appear far better than rumored. Moments ago the Bank of Greece presented its latest, January, deposit data. And it's a doozy: following a record €12.2 billion monthly outflow, greater...