Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Rome has approved a new emergency 45.5-billion-euro austerity plan in response to demands by the European Central Bank (ECB) to balance Italy’s budget by 2013. The Italian government approved the emergency package in line with the ECB request on Friday, despite strong disagreement and resistance from local government officials who maintain that new austerity... 

How far does the stock market have to go down before we officially call it a crash? The Dow is now downmore than 2,000 points in just the last 14 trading days. So can we now call this “The Stock Market Crash of 2011″? Today the Dow was down 519 points. Yesterday, an announcement by the Federal Reserve indicating that the Fed would keep interest rates near zero until mid-2013 helped the Dow surge... 

Italian trade unionists have protested against the government’s planned austerity measures amid budget talks between Premier Silvio Berlusconi and trade union representatives. Trade unions in Italy expressed their worries that the government’s tougher economic measures might heavily cut down on pensions, salaries and social welfare services. “We don’t want to pay for this crisis.... 

The number of people on food stamps in the United States exploded in May 2011. There were 312,240,000 people in the United States, mid May. 45,753,078 of them were on food stamps. That’s 14.7% of all Americans on food stamps. The average monthly amount? $133.80. This is the new economic metric, how many people are so poor, so broke, they qualify and use food stamps. The data is hard to find,... 

United States, Washington: The US Treasury on August 5, 2011 after Standard & Poor's cut the US credit rating for the first time in history. The US has lost its top-level triple-A credit rating for the first time since 1917, after Standard & Poor’s downgraded it to an AA-plus, with an even lower AA rating on the horizon. ­The decision comes after the White House and lawmakers reached... 

A shocking Russian Finance Ministry report prepared for Prime Minister Putin is warning today that massive liquidity runs on American and European financial institutions over the past fortnight are in danger of collapsing the entire global economic system leaving war as the only “option” for the West to use to protect itself from complete obliteration. According to this report, the genesis of... 

US President Barack Obama US President Barack Obama says America is witnessing its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and blamed political wrangling for the worsening of the crisis. “There is no doubt that we have gone through an extraordinary period in world history. We had the worst recession since the 1930s here in the United States,” Obama said in an interview... 

In this game, the house always wins. Bipartisan complicity stacked the deck against millions of working households, needing to know that political Washington is scamming them. The end result is the banana republicanization of America. American writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter: 1862 – 1910) coined the term (his fictional Republic of Anchuria) in his book, “Cabbages and Kings.” It refers... 

The number of impoverished people in Russia has increased by 2.3 million and made up 22.9 million in one year, the Russian Federal Statistics Agency said. Many experts believe that official statistics does not reflect the real state of affairs and is very often undervalued. Therefore, it means that the number of the poor in the country grows much faster. According to official statistics, an impoverished... 

The Greek Parliament voted in favor of the austerity measures by a narrow margin. The Greek parliament has voted in favor of new austerity measures, in a move that is expected to infuriate thousands of demonstrators outside the parliament. The austerity measures were approved on Wednesday with 155 votes in favor, 138 against and seven abstentions. Greece’s newly-approved austerity plan is worth... 

The International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday that the US debt burden is perilously unsustainable but warned against too-sharp fiscal adjustments that would slow the fragile economy. In its annual assessment of US financial strengths and weaknesses, the IMF also said that if the government does not hike its debt ceiling soon to accommodate current spending commitments, the impact could wreak havoc... 

Greece, Athens: Communist-affiliated unionists rally toward the Greek parliament on June 28, 2011. Greek trade unions have begun a 48-hour general strike against new austerity cuts which are due to go to a crucial vote on Wednesday. Some protesters are warning they will try to prevent MPs from entering the parliament. The strike is due to disrupt and even halt the work of most public services in Athens,... 

In America’s Financial Apocalypse, I discussed numerous flaws in the calculation of poverty levels within the U.S. This discussion was one of several that pointed to the vulnerable state of the U.S., which I predicted would sink into a deep depression triggered by the real estate bubble. Only after the commencement of America’s Second Great Depression have the economists and analysts begun to... 

Activists in Minsk protest against rise of fuel prices. As Minsk struggles to deal with the ongoing economic turmoil, rapid inflation is brewing unrest. The government had to lower fuel prices two days after a sharp increase, due to mass protests. ­On Thursday, Belarusian gas prices have dropped by almost a quarter, after President Lukashenko’s ordered the government to lower the cost. The prices... 

Dust-bowl refugees walk towards Los Angeles during the Great Depression. House prices have now fallen further than in the 1930s. The economic powerhouse of the 20th century emerged stronger from the Depression. But faced with cultural decay, structural weaknesses and reliance on finance, can the US do it again? America clocked up a record last week. The latest drop in house prices meant that the cost...