Greece

Greece's new prime minister headed to Brussels on Sunday to fight for the aid Athens needs to avoid bankruptcy, even as one of his coalition backers refused to give a written pledge to support reforms and a public sector union geared up for strikes, Reuters reported Sunday. Lucas Papademos must convince the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to give Greece the 8 billion euros it needs to avoid a mid-December default, but the conservative New Democracy party has refused to meet their most basic demand.

Greece's new prime minister said Monday his interim government would focus on implementing a European debt rescue deal, warning that failure to do so could force the country out of the eurozone, Agence France-Presse reported. In his first parliamentary address since taking office at the head of a national unity government on Friday, Lucas Papademos said progress had been made on tackling Greece's debt crisis but more was needed to keep it in the single currency.

Technocrat leaders in Italy and Greece rushing to form governments will face a critical test of their ability to limit the damage from the euro zone debt crisis when financial markets open on Monday, Reuters reported. Italy's president asked former European Commissioner Mario Monti on Sunday to form a government to restore market confidence in an economy whose debt burden is too big for the euro bloc to bail out.

Greece's major political parties on Sunday agreed to form a national unity government that will lead the country to new elections after putting in place a debt-slashing deal, in the hope of averting financial catastrophe for the country and winning back the trust of its European partners, Dow Jones reported. The deal was made possible after Prime Minister George Papandreou agreed to step down to make way for a new prime minister under a commonly accepted government.

That the Greek economy is in a downward spiral from a relentless program of austerity is well known. Greek manufacturing saw one of its sharpest falls ever in October, and this year overall production is expected to contract by more than 6 percent. What has not yet shown up in the official figures, though, is the extent to which the crisis atmosphere has brought the economy to a virtual standstill, the International Herald Tribune reported. Auto sales have essentially halted and are at their lowest level since 1993. People who do have cars have trouble paying to operate them.

In a tumultuous day of political gamesmanship, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou on Thursday called off a referendum on Greece’s new debt deal with the euro zone after winning a measure of support from his opposition and managed to repair, at least for a day, a major rupture in relations with Europe, the International Herald Tribune reported. The decision to abandon his idea of holding a popular vote on the European debt deal did not end the political turmoil here; Mr.

The leaders of Germany and France told Greece on Wednesday it would not receive another cent in European aid until it decides whether it wants to stay in the euro zone, Reuters reported. They also made clear that saving the euro was ultimately more important to them than rescuing Greece.

The Greek government teetered and stock markets around the world plummeted Tuesday after a hard-won European plan to save the Greek economy was suddenly thrown into doubt by the prospect of a public vote, the Associated Press reported. One day after Prime Minister George Papandreou stunned Europe by calling for a referendum, the ripples reached from Athens, where some of his own lawmakers rebelled against him, to Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average plunged almost 300 points.

European negotiators have asked Greek debt holders to accept a 60 per cent cut in the face value of their bonds, a hardline stance that far exceeds losses agreed in a deal between private investors and eurozone authorities three months ago, the Financial Times reported. The stance, delivered to a consortium of international banks at the weekend by Vittorio Grilli, Italian treasury chief and lead eurozone negotiator, is a victory for German-led northern creditor countries who have been pushing for Greek bondholders to accept far more of the burden for a second bail-out.

By now, it almost feels like a ritual: a strike and large demonstration disrupted by skirmishes and tear gas ahead of a parliamentary vote on new austerity measures that Greece needs to take to qualify for the next installment of aid the country needs to fend off default, the International Herald Tribune reported. But what was different on Wednesday, the first day of a two-day general strike before Parliament voted in the evening to approve new austerity measures, was the scale of the protest — tens of thousands of people — and the range of the demonstrators.