Puerto Rico Announces Bond Payment "Moratorium"

Having concluded last night that Puerto Rico debt is "unpayable," and that his government could not continue to borrow money to address budget deficits while asking its residents, already struggling with high rates of poverty and crime, to shoulder most of the burden through tax increases and pension cuts, Padilla confirmed tonight that (from Bloomberg): *PUERTO RICO TO SEEK "NEGOTIATED MORATORIUM", 'YEARS' OF POSTPONEMENT IN DEBT PAYMENTS Likening...

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IMF has made €2.5 billion profit out of Greece loans

Ahead of the payment of €462 million by Greece to the IMF on Thursday 9 April, figures released by the Jubilee Debt Campaign show that the IMF has made €2.5 billion of profit out of its loans to Greece since 2010. If Greece does repay the IMF in full this will rise to €4.3 billion by 2024. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund. Photo: IMF Staff Photographer/Michael Spilotro The IMF has been charging an effective...

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Greece: Why Is a Nation of 11 Million Causing Stock Market Losses Around the World Today?

Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece, Asks Parliament for Referendum on July 5, 2015 Greece has just a tad more population, at 11 million, than New York City and its boroughs. But this morning, it has caused hundreds of billions of dollars to be erased from stock and bond markets around the world. The situation in Greece this morning is as follows: banks and the Athens Stock Exchange have been closed until at least July 6, following a breakdown...

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How Activists Won Reparations for the Survivors of Chicago Police Department Torture

Gregory Banks, whose conviction for a 1983 murder was thrown out because his confession had been coerced, reacts at a news conference outside of a City Council meeting at City Hall in Chicago, May 6, 2015. The City Council approved a $5.5 million reparations package for victims of police torture during the 1970s and '80s under the watch of a notorious police commander, Jon Burge. (Andrew Nelles/The New York Times) Do you want media that's accountable...

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New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with “Unprivileged Belligerents”

A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual was recently released that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The book of combat instructions, titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual,” apparently covers rules of war for all branches of the U.S. military. One passage in particular is generating controversy, where journalists seem to be thrown into a convoluted and opaque category, in which they could be seen as “unprivileged...

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Why We’re Headed Toward A “Cashless Society”

Source: Bonner & Partners Don’t Count on Your ATM Cards Yesterday, came a report that the prime minister of Poland, Ewa Kopacz, has urged Poles traveling to Greece to take “a larger amount of cash” with them. Why? Because the situation could be “very dynamic,” she says. “Please do not count only on your ATM cards and on ATMs, but take a larger amount of cash with you.” Queues are forming at ATMs in Greece of late. These ATMs will keep working...

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