Lawrence McDonald

Article by BBC News Greece faces “uncontrolled chaos” if it fails to agree austerity measures and defaults on its debts, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has warned. He said ministers who disagreed with the spending cuts could not stay in the coalition government, hours after four ministers resigned over the proposals. Greek leaders are trying to [...]

Article by BBC News The EU’s 27 leaders are discussing how to create jobs and growth amid calls to go beyond enforcing budget discipline. The EU has more than 23 million unemployed people and there are fears that wide-ranging budget cuts will harm enterprise and training. The eurozone crisis is dominating the EU summit in [...]

Article by Austen Sherman and Sara Eisen, Bloomberg Whether or not Greece is able to reach an agreement on the restructuring of its debt, the country is set to “implode” as the economy contracts, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Steve Hanke. “The game is completely over,” Hanke, professor of applied economics, said at the Bloomberg Sovereign Debt Crisis [...]

Article by Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund is proposing to raise its lending capacity by $500 billion to insulate the global economy against any worsening of Europe’s debt crisis, according to a person familiar with the talks. The Washington-based lender currently has about $385 billion available to lend and wants to lift that to $885 [...]

The play on Europe before next Monday’s review of Greece’s austerity measures, tax collection rates, and private sector involvement, with Larry McDonald, Senior Director at Newedge.

Article By Sven Boll, Martin Hesse and Julia Amalia Heyer, Spiegel Online The outlook for cash-strapped Greece is looking increasingly bleak. Government reforms are behind target, and negotiations with private creditors over voluntary debt relief are stalled. A disorderly default could be just weeks away. At least the backdrop to the heated exchange was glamorous. [...]

Article By Chiara Vasarri and Lorenzo Totaro Prime Minister Mario Monti’s market honeymoon is ending as Italian bond yields approaching 7 percent signal mounting concern his government may struggle to sell 440 billion euros ($574 billion) of debt next year. Monti took just five weeks in office to push through a 30 billion-euro emergency budget package [...]

Article By Christos Ziotis, Marcus Bensasson and Jesse Westbrook, Bloomberg Greece’s creditors are resisting pressure from the International Monetary Fund to accept bigger losses on holdings of the indebted nation’s government bonds, said three people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Lenders want the 70 billion euros ($91 billion) of new bonds the government will issue in [...]

Major Actions This Week: White House On Monday, President Obama and Vice President Biden met with Senate leadership for debt limit talks, following the collapse in lower-level negotiations late last week.  No future White House meetings have been scheduled with Republican leaders. On Tuesday, the President Obama toured the Alcoa Davenport Works factory in Bettendorf, [...]