“This tragedy does not have a solution,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the prestigious IFO Institute in Munich.

“The policy of forced 'internal devaluation', deflation, and depression could risk driving Greece to the edge of a civil war. It is impossible to cut wages and prices by 30pc without major riots,” he said, speaking at the elite European House Ambrosetti forum at Lake Como.

The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

The feast of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15 is the high point of summer in the Greek Orthodox world. Here in one of the country's many churches, believers pray to the Virgin for mercy, with many of them falling to their knees.

France joined Germany and Spain in posting better-than-expected economic data pushing the eurozone past the US in the recovery stakes Friday. Compared to the same period of 2009, European growth measured a robust 1.7 percent.

BOA Merrill lowered its forecast for the European Union member’s 2010 economic performance to a 1.3 percent contraction from a previous forecast for a decline of 0.7 percent, Mai Doan, a London-based analyst at the bank, wrote in an e-mailed note. The economy shrank a record 7.1 percent in 2009.

As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans,

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov pledged yesterday to speed up work on Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project, in a move to secure cheaper gas deliveries.

After talks here with Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and Gazprom’s deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev, Borisov said the two countries had drafted “a road map” to accelerate work on the project, which is being built by the Russian gas giant and Italy’s ENI.

The survey's findings underline suspicions that the new Chancellor, George Osborne, will have to firefight a full-blown crisis in Britain's biggest trading partner in his first years in office

The single currency is in its death throes and may not survive in its current membership for

It is interesting to review some of the arguments Attali made in his article on Market and Democracy in light of new developments in the World economies:

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Empire the market economy and democracy appear to have triumphed. Universally praised these two central values of Western society have become the prerequisite