Enormous debt accumulated over decades sent the country into a recession so deep it kills 200 businesses and 900 jobs every day. Elections this month failed to produce a government, and Greeks will vote again in June. Meanwhile, life for most Greeks continues to get worse.
“Every day I see more people sleeping rough on the street,” said Spachos, 72. “They can’t even wash their clothes or themselves. … It worries me.”
Spachos, who has been staying with different friends in recent months, may soon join them. A former doctor, he could not afford to retire and found work as a hospital orderly. But as Greece’s woes mounted so did his own, and he lost his job, then two more: one as a gardener and one as a groundskeeper.
Now, he is unemployed and homeless, and spoke this week at a municipal soup kitchen, where he ate a plastic bowl of bean soup, a thick slice of bread and a banana.
“I am ashamed to be here,” Spachos said, his eyes filling with tears. “My heart is broken.”
“Greeks have fight in them, so maybe things will improve in a couple of years,” he said, opening his shirt to reveal a scar from surgery to implant a pacemaker. “But I won’t be around to see it.”
Here is a look at some of Greece’s problems as it struggles to pay its debts:
UNEMPLOYMENT
Over the past three years unemployment has roughly doubled, and Greece has lost more than 10 percent of its output.
Nearly 320,000 people lost their jobs in the 12-month period ending in February, pushing the unemployment rate to 22 percent. Greece’s 3.8 million employed people are
]]>“So far so good,” Obama proclaimed after economic talks at Camp David, his secluded and highly secure mountaintop retreat. He played international host in the midst of a re-election bid that will turn on the economy, underscoring his stakes in getting his allies abroad to rally around some answers.
Yet there were no bold prescriptions at hand. Instead, leaders seemed intent on trying to inspire confidence by agreeing on a broad strategy no matter their differences.
Coping with shaky oil markets, the leaders set the stage for a united release of national oil reserves to balance any disruption in world markets when tough new sanctions are imposed on Iran’s exports because of its disputed nuclear program. The leaders said they were ready to take “appropriate action” to meet any shortages.
The mere preparation to release oil reserves could help calm markets and ensure that oil prices, which have been dropping, don’t climb again and anger consumers as U.S. elections approach.
The Group of Eight summit includes leaders of the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to the summit as the European leader who had demanded austerity as the most important step toward easing the eurozone‘s debt crisis. But the election of Socialist Francois Hollande as president of France, and Greek elections that created political chaos in the country, were clear rejections of the belt-tightening Merkel represented.
Merkel said growth and deficit-cutting reinforced each other and that everyone around the table agreed. “That is great progress,” she
]]>Google Inc. is buying the mobile phone maker for $12.5 billion. The deal was announced last August and had received all necessary regulatory approvals except in China. Google’s relations with China have been strained since it moved its search engine out of the country two years ago in a dispute over censorship and security.
Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick says the Chinese government cleared the deal on Saturday.
The deal allows Google to expand into manufacturing phones, tablet computers and other consumer devices for the first time. Google also gets access to more than 17,000 Motorola patents.
The deal is expected to close early next week.
]]>The protesters peacefully filled the city center of continental Europe‘s biggest financial hub on a warm and pleasant afternoon, said Frankfurt police spokesman Ruediger Regis. He said 20,000 people were there, while organizers put the number at 25,000.
The protest group, named Blockupy, has called for blocking access to the European Central Bank, which is located in Frankfurt’s business district.
Organizer spokesman Roland Seuss the protest is “against the Europe-wide austerity dictate by the (creditor) troika of ECB, the EU Commission and the International Monetary Fund.”
Last year, thousands in Germany took to the streets in rallies during the worldwide Occupy movement. But as Germany’s economy is robust and unemployment at a record-low, those protests have mostly fizzled out.
But Europe’s lingering debt crisis has given new fuel to some demonstrations.
Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, suffers none of the austerity measures now heavily affecting southern European nations such as Greece, Portugal and Spain. But Germany has championed the sometimes harsh spending cuts across Europe to get deficits under control.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed through a European treaty enshrining fiscal discipline, but she is being criticized for suffocating growth through her insistence on austerity measures.
Her conservative government has rejected significant new stimulus measures, but Merkel is increasingly pressured — not least by newly elected French President Francois Hollande and President Barack Obama — to prop up investment to foster growth and avoid another recession in Europe.
“We are in solidarity with the people of Greece and other European countries who are already gravely suffering from (budget) cuts
]]>“All of us are absolutely committed to making sure that growth and stability and fiscal consolidation are part of an overall package,” Obama said as he and other leaders gathered in a rustic cabin at this wooded presidential retreat.
Obama was referring to the debt crises in Greece and Spain, primarily, although he was not specific in brief remarks to reporters.
Leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Britain, Russia, and Japan are trying to figure out how to tame Europe’s debt crisis while also increasing the demand for goods and spurring job growth.
Obama’s argument for additional stimulus measures alongside belt-tightening is primarily aimed at Germany, the strongest member of the union that uses the common Euro currency, although Obama did not say so. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was seated a few places away from Obama at a small round table.
Leaders of the world’s economic powers say Germany should balance its push for European fiscal austerity with doses of stimulus spending to avoid a financial calamity with global repercussions.
In talks Saturday, the leaders were looking to build consensus even though a decisive plan of action seemed out of reach for now.
“We’ll also be talking about uncertainty in the energy markets and how to resolve some of those issues,” Obama said at the start of discussions on the global economy.
Obama chose the secluded Camp David setting in part to give leaders a chance for a freewheeling
]]>The recall affects only Wranglers from the 2010 model year that have automatic transmissions and were built before July 14, 2010, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in documents posted Saturday on its website.
Debris can get caught between a plate that protects the transmission and the catalytic converter, causing a fire. A catalytic converter is part of the exhaust system and uses heat and precious metals to control pollution.
Chrysler knows of at least 14 complaints of fires caused by the problem with 2010 Wranglers. The company says it doesn’t know of any injuries. It said debris can get trapped when the SUVs are driven off-road or through tall brush.
Chrysler, which makes the classic Wrangler and other Jeeps, will fix the problem free of charge by replacing the plate with a bar so debris doesn’t get caught.
The recall affects about 68,000 Wranglers in the U.S., 6,000 in Canada, 1,500 in Mexico and about 11,000 in other countries, Chrysler spokesman Eric Mayne said. Chrysler will contact all the owners by mail. Recall work is expected to begin this month.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also checked Wranglers from the 2007 through 2012 model years and determined that only the 2010 models had the debris problem. Mayne said the 2010 Wranglers had a transmission plate and catalytic converter that were configured differently than the Wranglers from the other model years.
NHTSA said in documents that it had received 14 complaints of Wrangler fires from the other model years, but Mayne said there was no pattern or common cause in those fires.
]]>The $2 billion loss has renewed calls by Democratic lawmakers for tougher rules on major financial institutions.
“Without Wall Street reform, we could have found ourselves with the taxpayers once again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama said in his weekly media address Saturday. He added: “We’ve got to finish the job of implementing this reform and putting these rules in place.”
Obama promoted rules that would require big banks or financial institutions to have more cash on hand to cover losses and that would take away big bonuses and paydays from failed CEOs.
The president said financial institutions that “aren’t cheating customers or making risky bets that could damage the whole economy” have nothing to fear from reforms.
“Yes, it discourages big banks and financial institutions from making risky bets with taxpayer-insured money. And it encourages them to do things that actually help the economy — like extending loans to entrepreneurs with good ideas, to middle-class families who want to buy a home, to students who want to pursue higher education,” he said.
Though Congress passed the tougher oversight of the financial sector in 2010, the law gave bank regulators time to write the new rules.
One focus of the financial oversight overhaul is a provision that restricts banks’ ability to trade for their own profit, a practice known as proprietary trading. It is named for Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. But a draft of the rule has failed to satisfy either banks, which says it would disrupt some of their core
]]>The $2 billion loss has renewed calls by Democratic lawmakers for tougher rules on major financial institutions.
“Without Wall Street reform, we could have found ourselves with the taxpayers once again on the hook for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama said in his weekly media address Saturday. He added: “We’ve got to finish the job of implementing this reform and putting these rules in place.”
Obama promoted rules that would require big banks or financial institutions to have more cash on hand to cover losses and that would take away big bonuses and paydays from failed CEOs.
The president said financial institutions that “aren’t cheating customers or making risky bets that could damage the whole economy” have nothing to fear from reforms.
“Yes, it discourages big banks and financial institutions from making risky bets with taxpayer-insured money. And it encourages them to do things that actually help the economy — like extending loans to entrepreneurs with good ideas, to middle-class families who want to buy a home, to students who want to pursue higher education,” he said.
One focus of the financial oversight overhaul is a provision that restricts banks’ ability to trade for their own profit, a practice known as proprietary trading. It is named for Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman. But a draft of the rule has failed to satisfy either banks, which says it would disrupt some of their core functions, or advocates of stronger regulation who say it would have prevented JPMorgan’s loss.
In the Republican’s weekly address, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson faulted what he called
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