George Papandreou

The financial crisis facing the European Union claimed another member country's leader when Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc announced on Monday his decision to step down. Prime Minister Boc said that he was resigning in order to reduce political and social tension that had been growing after weeks...

Tensions are rising in Germany and the United Kingdom due to a Friday meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. The two European Union leaders are scheduled to meet today to discuss issues surrounding the European financial crisis. Prime Minister...

From Greece to Italy, the fire keeps burning in Europe, just in a different country on the continent. There were rumors early this morning that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was going to resign, as first reported by Italian newspaper Foglio. This sent the Italian stock market, the...

The last 12 hours or so of trading in global financial markets has been extremely volatile due to the fluid situation unfolding in Europe. On Wednesday evening, S&P 500 futures were indicating that Thursday's open could be brutal. In the overnight trading session, futures contracts on the S...

Yesterday, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said that he would put the most recent Greek bailout package to a referendum vote. Essentially, if the Greek people were to vote "no" in the proposed referendum it would likely result in an exit from the EU and a messy default. Not surprisingly,...

Back in July, I wrote about the debt dominoes starting to fall, but no one was caring that much. The article related to the problems in the U.S., where we eventually saw S&P downgrade U.S. debt. Yet, the issue of a debt domino is easily just as applicable to Europe as well. Last week, when...

Much of Greece has been shut down for the second day in a row as Greek citizens protest against an upcoming parliamentary vote on yet another round of austerity measures. Passage of the latest round of austerity measures being debated in parliament is necessary in order for the Greek government to...

Slovakia put the future of the euro in jeopardy yesterday when the tiny, poor European country voted against enhanced powers for the European Union that are needed in order to prevent a financial meltdown. Slovakia's ruling party failed to get enough votes to give the European Financial Stability...

Moody's Investors Service downgraded 8 Greek banks on Friday, citing the banks' exposure to Greek government bonds and a worsening Greek economy. Earlier this year, all of Greece's major banks agreed to a government bond swap that resulted in them reporting billions of euros in losses, which hurt...

The Capitol of Greece was brought to a standstill on Thursday as thousands of public transport workers went on strike in protest of the latest round of austerity measures that are aimed at convincing Greece's international creditors that the country is serious about reducing its fiscal deficits....

The markets were dealt another blow on Wednesday when Moody's Investors Service downgraded two of France's biggest banks and placed a third on review. Societe Generale and Credit Agricole were downgraded, while Moody's said that it would take more time to review BNP Paribas. There had been...

Normally when stocks are getting crushed, as they are today, gold is a safe haven. Right now, however, gold is plunging, down another $50 an ounce today, hovering just above $1,800 an ounce. This begs the question - why? There are two schools of thought on this. One is that investors are...