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Greece is back in the news re a economic huge storm. The new Syriza (leftist) government apparently will not knuckle under to the "Troika" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF) re Greece borrowing more in exchange for more austerity there in Greece. Syriza looks like they want to default or at least get BIG concessions from Germany. Greece has a debt:GDP of about 175% IIRC.
There is a deadline, FWIW, of February 28 for Greece to agree.
Greece has suffered horribly the past few years, it currently has an unemployment of some 25%, YOUTH unemployment of 50%. There seems to be a lot of blame to go around:
-- greedy banksters (including Goldman-Sachs helping a prior Greek government to cook its books)
-- general corruption in Greece
-- unwillingness of Germany (and a few others) to absorb the debts of Greece
-- the European Central Bank (led by ex-Goldman employee Mario Draghi)
Etc.
Why does Greece matter? Its economy is small. But a "Grexit" (Greek Exit) might be contagious. Spain has a new & increasingly popular leftist party ("Podemos" = "We Can") that wants to default too, they just had a huge rally in Madrid, apparently in support of Greece.
Spain is TBTF, a failure there would destroy many banks in Europe.zerohedge.com has been closely following events in Greece and Europe.