Eight out of 90 European banks have failed stress tests on whether they could withstand another financial crisis. None were in Italy - which it hopes might help the country fend off spiraling debt costs, along with the 70-billion-Euro cuts which parliament passed on Friday. But, as RT's Sara Firth reports, there's only so much that can be done before the people take power into their own hands.
With Greece forced to seek a second bail-out to avoid bankruptcy, Open Europe has today published a briefing cataloguing how the eurozone crisis could drive the European Central Bank itself into insolvency, with taxpayers likely to pick up a big chunk of the bill.
This week has witnessed two very different reactions to European debt. At one end of Europe, Iceland's voters decided once again not to accept the payment terms of their 'creditors', the British and Dutch governments, following the collapse of Icelandic banks in 2008. At the other, Portugal is being pushed down the path of shock therapy by the European Union, with the people of that country cut out of a process which will change their lives dramatically.
Pressure is growing on Portugal from Germany, France and other euro zone countries to seek financial help from the EU and IMF to stop the bloc's debt crisis from spreading, a senior euro zone source said on Sunday.
Overdrawn American cities could face financial collapse in 2011, defaulting on hundreds of billions of dollars of borrowings and derailing the US economic recovery. Nor are European cities safe – Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, Venice: all are in trouble
There are fresh demonstrations in Madrid against severe budget cuts as the country tries to reduce its massive debt. Spain has been tipped as the next Eurozone economy at risk of needing a bailout, but some say it could be too big to save. RT talks to Jim Corr, a political activist and musician from the Irish band the Corrs.
Among the mega-forces moving the tectonic plates and imperiling the nation-states of the world from above and below are these:
First, ethno-nationalism, which threatens nations with secession and break-up. We see it in the Uighurs of China, the Naga of India, the Baluch of Iran and Pakistan, the Kurds of Iran, Syria, Iraq and Turkey, the Chechens of the Russian Caucasus and the Walloons of Belgium.
Second, transnationalism. This is the project of global elites who seek to reduce nations to ethno-cultural enclaves in a new world order run by these same bloodless bureaucrats whose loyalty is neither to the land nor people whence they came.
Portugal, Iceland, Ireland, Greece and Spain can sue Canada for damages from global financial crisis
It is fitting that Greece is at the heart of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis because the financial calamity which began three years ago is unfolding with all the grim predictability of a classical tragedy.
The Telegraph, 1 May 2010
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Portugal risks becoming the new Greece.
With a higher debt burden and a slower 10-year growth rate than Greece, Western Europe’s poorest country is being punished by investors as the sovereign debt crisis spreads. The risk premium on Portuguese bonds rose to more than double the past year’s average this month. Portugal’s credit default swaps show investors rank its debt as the world’s eighth-riskiest, worse than for Lebanon and Guatemala.
Down on the Euro Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others, finds Eric Walberg
Two million people took to the streets of Athens last week in the country's second general strike this month, protesting the austerity measures proposed by their socialist government. All of Greece came to a 24-hour standstill and the airport was closed as a result of the action. The only public transport was the commuter train so that protesters could reach the demonstration.
According to a report out last week, there is huge off-balance-sheet debt guaranteed by Greece and the other PIIGS, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain.
Public sector workers in Portugal have gone on strike in protest to the so-called austerity measures imposed by the government to cut national debt.