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When Chancellor Angela Merkel's current government came into power, Germany was just emerging from the economic crisis. But despite pledges to curb deficit spending, Merkel's administration has been running up debt at a record pace -- and bailing out Greece will only exacerbate the situation.

Spain risks falling into the same trap as Greece, these investors say, unless it takes more forceful action. It could find itself unable to raise money on the private markets at acceptable interest rates - even though its government debt burden, as a share of the overall economy, is only half what Greece carries.

Greece is only the beginning. The world's leading economies have long lived beyond their means, and the financial crisis caused government debt to swell dramatically. Now the bill is coming due, but not all countries will be able to pay it.

The German government has failed to win backing from opposition parties for its bill to participate in the Greece bailout.

The United States officials began talking to their counterparts about an American concept: overwhelming force. "It's all about psychology," said the senior official. "You have to convince people that the government will get its act together."

Meanwhile, the banks that caused much of this mess are getting all their money back. A more equitable approach would require the banks to pay at least part of the bill - writing down the debts of some European governments or extending their maturities into the future to allow battered European economies time to recover.

Europe's common currency fell to a four-year low against the dollar Monday as fears mounted that deep cuts in government spending to combat the region's debt crisis could severely damage Europe's economic recovery.

The Portuguese government Thursday followed Spain's lead in agreeing with the main opposition party on more austerity measures to cut the deficit faster than planned, to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product next year from 9.4 percent last year.

The country's largest banks and trade groups have hired more than 240 former government officials and legislative staffers to lobby on their behalf in Congress, part of a broader campaign by Wall Street firms to limit the impact of proposed reforms on their industry, according to a report issued Tuesday by liberal groups.

European financial markets were expected to suffer another week of turmoil after the Spanish government was forced over the weekend to rescue a regional mortgage lender and European leaders revealed deep divisions over how to tackle mounting deficits in the eurozone.

Across Western Europe, the "lifestyle superpower," the assumptions and gains of a lifetime are suddenly in doubt. The deficit crisis that threatens the euro has also undermined the sustainability of the European standard of social welfare, built by left-leaning governments since the end of World War II.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has forced governments to alter their behaviour in the eight years of its existence, the UN chief has said.

"Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world." -The late people's historian Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 - January 27, 2010)

Interest rates are rising in the long term. Businesses will have to adapt, while governments must prevent an era of creeping financial protectionism.

The double dip of this crisis is upon us. The latest data agree: the housing market has been in full double-dip mode for five months as home prices keep declining. The foreclosure disaster keeps increasing the combination of homeless families and empty homes. Think capitalist efficiency. Unemployment rose back above 9 % again. The average length of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, the longest since these records began in 1948. Investments by businesses are decelerating and governments keep dropping workers. 

Economist and writer John Perkins was deeply involved in Washington's economic schemes to create a global empire. Now he tells RT what's come out of it - and who really controls the world's biggest economy.

Chinese rating agency Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. said Wednesday it has cut the credit rating of the United States from A+ to A with a negative outlook after the U.S. federal government announced that the country's debt limit would be increased.

Icelanders have quietly carried out a revolution by toppling a weak government, drafting a new constitution and seeking to jail those responsible for the country's economic debacle.

The fundamental problem that much of the world faces today is that investors are overreacting to debt-to-GDP ratios, fearful of some magic threshold, and demanding fiscal-austerity programs too soon. They are asking governments to cut expenditure while their economies are still vulnerable. Households are running scared, so they cut expenditures as well, and businesses are being dissuaded from borrowing to finance capital expenditures. The lesson is simple: We should worry less about debt ratios and thresholds, and more about our inability to see these indicators for the artificial - and often irrelevant - constructs that they are.

When Perry accuses Ben Bernanke of treachery and treason, his violent rhetoric ("we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas") is scary in itself. But we shouldn't let that obscure Perry's substantive message - that neither Bernanke nor the Fed really deserve to exist, to control the US money supply, and to work towards a dual mandate of price stability and full employment. For the first time in living memory, someone with a non-negligible chance of winning the US presidency is arguing not over who should head the Fed, but whether the Fed should even exist in the first place. Looked at against this backdrop, the recent volatility in the stock market, not to mention the downgrade of the US from triple-A status, makes perfect sense. Global corporations are actually weirdly absent from the list of institutions in which the public has lost its trust, but the way in which they've quietly grown their earnings back above pre-crisis levels has definitely not been ratified by broad-based economic recovery, and therefore feels rather unsustainable. Meanwhile, the USA itself has undoubtedly been weakened by a shrinking tax base, a soaring national debt, a stretched military, and a legislature which has consistently demonstrated an inability to tackle the great tasks asked of it. It looks increasingly as though we're entering Phase 2 of the global crisis, with 2008-9 merely acting as the appetizer. In Phase 1, national and super-national treasuries and central banks managed to come to the rescue and stave off catastrophe. But in doing so, they weakened themselves to the point at which they're unable to rise to the occasion this time round. Our hearts want government to come through and save the economy. But our heads know that it's not going to happen. And that failure, in turn, is only going to further weaken institutional legitimacy across the US and the world. It's a vicious cycle, and I can't see how we're going to break out of it.