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Like Greece, the Puerto Rican government has more debt than it can service, and some are calling for a bailout by U.S. taxpayers. The major Puerto Rican state-owned or controlled enterprises are all losing money, including the power authority which is insolvent. Puerto Rico is an American territory that was acquired from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The island has a population of about 3.6 million, which is declining as many Puerto Ricans emigrate to the U.S. mainland or elsewhere because of the continuing economic stagnation. Puerto Ricans are American citizens, but their per capita income is about...

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...

What has a Papal Encyclical calling on the world to end its use of fossil fuels and to pray to God for the success of the global “climate summit” in December got in common with the Greek euro crisis, the ominous rift between the West and Russia, and the shambles Europe is making over the desperation of African and Syrian refugees to find safety this side of the Mediterranean? They are all different aspects of the two greatest acts of political make-believe of our time, so all-pervasive that it is hard for us to grasp just how much effect they...

End austerity: it’s cheating us all; Jobs not Trident; No cuts; Defy Tory rule; Cut war not welfare; Stop fracking; a Living Wage for mothers; and, The Pope gets it, why can’t you? With the slogans emblazoned on banners, posters and flags, anti-austerity marchers shouted slogans, sang, and beat drums, as they walked through London in what is being called the biggest protest march that the city has seen. The ‘End Austerity Now’ demonstration saw participation by an estimated crowd of between 70,000 and 250,000, all coming together to protest against cuts imposed due to austerity, the threats to the...

Domingo Tortorelli promised the Uruguayan people the earth: a milk fountain at every street corner, a working day of no longer than 15 minutes and a fuel-saving road from the capital Montevideo to Rivera, more than 300 miles away, that would slope downhill in both directions.

Here is what you need to know now as Greece enters a pivotal week in its testy relationship with the Eurozone: 1. Greece’s most immediate – as in first thing Monday morning – source of danger is its banking system. To compensate for accelerated deposit flight, the European Central Bank injected additional emergency funding on Friday to allow the banks to open on Monday. With a lot more needed, the ECB will grow more hesitant to pump in new money unless the Greek government secures an agreement with its European partners and the institutions through which they operate (the European...

The mad dash and perhaps last dash for euros in Greece is on. Some will undoubtedly be frozen out as soon as the ECB halts emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to Greek Banks. Emergence Meeting Monday, Unscheduled ECB Conference Call Today There's an Emergency Meeting of Eurozone Leader on Monday to discuss Greece, but the ECB may very well act in advance. Once ELA is removed, Greece will soon be forced to issue capital controls. Greek banks have continued to suffer withdrawals amid concerns that Athens and its creditors will fail to strike a deal to avoid a debt default. The...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said after Friday's talks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that a prospective Russian natural gas pipeline should help Greece service its debt, but the Kremlin said the question of direct Russian financial aid to Greece was not discussed. Speaking of the pipeline deal at a meeting with top executives of global news agencies, including The Associated Press, which began nearly three hours behind schedule at around midnight, Putin said he saw no support for the Greeks from the EU. "If EU wants Greece to pay its debts it should be...

The European Central Bank told a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Thursday that it was not sure if Greek banks, which have been suffering large daily deposit outflows, would be able to open on Monday, officials with knowledge of the talks said. The officials said that during the closed-door meeting of the ministers on Greece, the chairman of the meeting Jeroen Dijsselbloem asked European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure if Greek banks would be able to open tomorrow.

LONDON — Global financial markets suffered their first bout of significant contagion from the Greek crisis this year on Monday after 11th hour talks between the near bankrupt country and its creditors collapsed. After weeks of minor ebbs and flows on the stop-start negotiations, bond markets across the euro zone signalled alarm that a deal may not be reached by mid-year, when Athens must repay 1.6 billion euros (US$1.8 billion) to the International Monetary Fund. The premium investors demand to hold Spanish, Italian and Portuguese government bonds over low-risk German Bunds hit 2015 highs, with the 10-year yield gap between...

Greece and its creditors hardened their stances on Monday after the collapse of talks aimed at preventing a default and possible euro exit, prompting Germany's EU commissioner to say the time had come to prepare for a "state of emergency". Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ignored pleas from European leaders to act fast. Instead he blamed creditors for Sunday's breakdown of the cash-for-reform talks, the biggest setback in long-running negotiations to unlock aid for Greece. Athens now has just two weeks to find a way out of the impasse before it faces a 1.6 billion euro repayment due to the...

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to hold an emergency government meeting at midday London time to discuss the failure of the latest round of discussions with its creditors to help stop the country tumbling into bankruptcy. Tsipras will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis, State Minister Nikos Pappas and Alternative Foreign Minister for International Economic Relations Euclid Tsakalotos in the wake of the breakdown of negotiations in Brussels at the weekend, a government spokesman confirmed. Talks between Greece and its creditors over the weekend yet again failed to resolve the impasse over reforms, with European officials blaming Greece...

U.S. stocks traded about 1 percent lower on Monday, following a decline in European equities on the collapse of weekend talks between Greece and its creditors. "Right now the key driver in the U.S. and international markets seems the breakdown in the Greece negotiations," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities. The Dow Jones industrial average fell back into the red for 2015. The index traded about 160 points lower after earlier falling nearly 200 points, with United Technologies leading all blue chips lower. Information technology led declines across all 10 S&P 500 sector

BRUSSELS/ATHENS (Reuters) - Talks on breaking a deadlock between Greece and its international creditors broke up in failure on Sunday, with European leaders venting their frustration as Athens stumbled closer toward a debt default that threatens its future in the euro. With Athens insisting it would never give in to demands from the EU and IMF for pension and wage cuts, the European Commission declared that the negotiations in Brussels, also involving the European Central Bank, had not succeeded.

Why Is The EU Forcing European Nations To Adopt 'Bail-In' Legislation by the End of the Summer? Are they expecting something to happen? As you will read about below, the European Union says that any nation within the EU that does not enact "bail-in" legislation within the next two months will face legal action. The countries that are being threatened in this manner include Italy and France. If you fast forward two months from this moment, that puts us in early August. So clearly the European Union wants everything to be squared away by the end of the summer. Is...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

From next Monday Zimbabweans with have their mental arithmetic simplified for them with the news some zeros are coming off the currency. Quite a lot of zeros. No less than 16, as the federal reserve attempts to end funny money by offering one new Zimbabwe dollar in exchange for 35 quadrillion old ones. However the real hyperinflation rate is in fact worse. The money being replaced was only issued in 2008, when the exchange rate was one for 10 billion. The real hyperinflation rate has 25 zeroes attached. This is now hyperinflation an elderly German would recognise, with all its...

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/609341858045497344 https://twitter.com/TraderStef/status/609355146842275840 https://twitter.com/JAFF3/status/609343992803774464 https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/609341880623591424 The bank runs (and capital controls) begin. Macedonia Central Bank Governor Bogov states: *GREEK BANKS IN MACEDONIA CAN’T WITHDRAW CASH: BOGOV*MACEDONIAN BANKS PROTECTED IN CASE OF GREXIT: BOGOV How long before the rest of Europe follows suit and a bank holiday is declared Monday to "Cyprus" depositors? He further added: *MACEDONIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES MAJOR RISKS FROM POLITICAL CRISIS http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/macedonia-central-bank-blocks-greek-bank-withdrawals-case-grexit Macedonia Central Bank blocks Greek bank withdrawals FXStreet (Córdoba) - Macedonian Central Bank's Governor Dimitar Bogov has stated that Greek banks are not able to withdraw cash. According to Bogov, this withdrawal halt is protection against...

Explanation: What's that glowing in the distance? Although it may look like a lighthouse, the rays of light near the horizon actually emanate from the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, Greece. Some temple lights are even reflected in the Aegean Sea in the foreground. Although meant to be a monument to the sea, in this image, the temple's lights seem to be pointing out locations on the sky. For example, the wide ray toward the right fortuitously points toward the Lagoon Nebula in the central band of our Milky Way, which runs diagonally down the image from the upper...

One is the plight of Greece, with the nation's leftist government and its creditors engaged in the latest round of brinksmanship over its debt. Greece is running out of cash, but international creditors are refusing to release bailout money unless the government makes concessions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected on a platform of fighting back against European-imposed austerity, has refused to budge. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, had expected to have a proposal from Tsipras several days ago, but he was "visibly angry," according to The Guardian... A Greek exit would pose a challenge to a beleaguered...