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First and foremost, the eurozone countries’ decision to admit Greece to the single currency in 2002 was woefully irresponsible, with French advocacy deserving much of the blame.

Second, much of the financing for Greece’s debts came from German and French banks that earned huge profits by intermediating loans from their own countries and from Asia.

Third, Greece’s eurozone partners wield a massive stick that is typically absent in sovereign-debt negotiations. If Greece does not accept the conditions imposed on it to maintain its membership in the single currency, it risks being thrown out of the European Union altogether.

 Second, it is the responsibility of the leading centrist parties to recognize the options explicitly. If they do not, extremist parties either of the right or the left will take control of the debate, and convert what is a conflict between different economic sectors into a nationalist conflict or a class conflict. If the former win, it will spell the end of the grand European experiment.

First, as long as Spain suffers from its current debt burden, it does not matter how intelligently and forcefully it implements economic reforms. It will not be able to grow out of its debt burden and must choose between two paths

Most currency and sovereign debt crises in modern history ultimately represent a conflict over how the costs are to be assigned among two different groups

The American tech sector has started thinking likewise. In some parts of Google, for instance, as many as 14 percent of employees do not have college degrees.

Eiso Kant, a 24-year-old Dutch entrepreneur — a veteran, by the conference’s standards — has settled in Madrid. He initially came to study at its IE University, but then started Tyba, an online job recruitment platform focused on start-up companies.

Aya Jaff, a 19-year-old, Iraqi-born German, set up an association to teach coding to young people, while herself completing a degree in computer sciences.

Nikos Chountis, Greece's deputy foreign minister, said on Tuesday that Russia and China had already offered financial support to the country.

Cyprus has already caused a political storm by offering to expand Russian access to its ports and airfields – including “military facilities” - though it has stopped short of offering full military bases.

Both Ms Le Pen and Mr Grillo want their countries to leave the eurozone.

Unlike two years ago, we now have a clearer idea about the long-term policy response. Austerity is here to stay. Fiscal policy will continue to contract as member states fulfil their obligations under new European fiscal rules.

And what about structural reforms? We should not overestimate their effect. Germany’s much-praised welfare and labour reforms made it more competitive against other eurozone countries. But they did not increase domestic demand. Applied to the eurozone as a whole, their effect would be even smaller as not everybody can become simultaneously more competitive against one another.

hese serial disappointments do not tell us conclusively that the eurozone will fail. But they tell us that secular stagnation is very probable. For me, that constitutes the true metric of failure.

As of mid-April, Moldovans can travel visa-free to the E.U. Transnistria residents who have Moldovan passports also will benefit.

About a fifth of the European Union’s supply of natural gas flows through Ukraine. Ukraine itself imported from Russia 63 percent of the natural gas it consumed in 2012, producing the remaining 37 percent domestically, according to the United States Energy Information Agency.

American, European and Chinese regulators have put in effect energy-efficiency rules that phase out the use of incandescent bulbs. Big multinationals that make light bulbs like Philips, Osram and General Electric have responded by embracing light-emitting diodes, which use one-fifth of the electricity of incandescent bulbs and half the electricity of fluorescent bulbs.

Many Chinese producers also have a poor and worsening reputation for quality, which may hurt them in the long term.

The industry, for instance, is highly segmented.

Lighting accounts for about 6 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, and LEDs have the potential to steeply reduce them.

Prices have fallen by nearly half in the last year for low-end, low-wattage LEDs made in China, and by 15 to 20 percent for the higher-wattage versions made elsewhere, buyers and manufacturing executives said.

“We do not buy Chinese LEDs,” said Mike Pugh, the procurement director at Xicato in San Jose, Calif., a large provider of indoor lighting systems for retailers and hotels. “We just can’t take that chance.”

Xicato instead buys LEDs from multinationals like Cree of Durham, N.C.; Philips Lumileds, based in San Jose, Calif.; and Osram Opto Semiconductors of Regensburg, Germany.

Three-quarters of China’s electricity still comes from burning coal, which contributes to severe air pollution as well as global warming.

She earns $500 a month plus medical benefits and free food and lodging in an air-conditioned dormitory where employees sleep four to six i

the solar and LED industries in China received huge loans at low interest rates from state-owned banks following directives from Beijing

“Do you believe that things are going to get better? If you do, you don’t want to be in Treasuries at 2.5 percent,” he said. “Some things don’t make sense to me. It’s frustrating.”

For all of 2013, gross domestic product increased by 1.9 percent, compared with 2.8 percent for 2012.

Orders and shipments of durable goods

were flat in 2013, and housing has weakened. February was the eighth consecutive month of declines in pending home sales, leaving them down 10.2 percent from 12 months earlier.

the industrial sector, which includes manufacturers of business equipment. Another preferred segment is banks; he expects them to flourish as interest rates rise and the gap widens between what they charge in interest and what they pay.

Mr. Morris encourages stock investors to buy American.

Shell is working with Gazprom on natural gas extraction in Russia; Exxon has a multibillion dollar exploration partnership with Rosneft, a major oil producer controlled by the Russian government, and BP owns nearly 20 percent of Rosneft.

"Shell and Exxon have physical assets in Russia," said Gheit. "But pound-for-pound, BP has the biggest exposure in Russia." Although BP may have the most to lose from an economic tug-of-war between Moscow and the West, tough lessons that BP learned in Russia—through a defunct partnership with Rosneft called TNK-BP—also make BP best equipped for any future fallout, said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy.

Spiro said that several German firms have also steeled themselves for possible fallout from friction between the Russia and the West. "German companies are huge here," said Spiro, naming BASF, energy firm RWE, and Siemens as companies with operations in Russia. BASF is working to finalize a deal with Gazprom that would give it a stake in Siberian oil fields; RWE has reached a preliminary deal to sell its natural gas subsidiary to Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and German Khan, and Siemens has a partnership with state-run railroad monopoly Russian Railways. Late last month, Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser made a trip to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his residence and voice support for a "trusting relationship" with Russian companies.

We know that if the West's resolve starts to crumble, it will almost certainly start in Germany,

"That's the canary in the coal mine."

"It starts with Germany and works its way down," said Hogan. "They have the most trade back-and-forth, and Germany gets the highest percentage of its energy from Russia."

Alcoa owns aluminum fabrication facilities in Russia, and Boeing has a design center in Moscow, as well as a joint venture with VSMPO-Avisma, the world's largest titanium producer.

Members of the Russian parliament have also proposed charging international payments companies like Visa and Mastercard with pre-emptive "security fees," with the stated aim of preparing for future financial disruptions.

4,000 jobs

Today, the aluminum products have approximately a 40 percent  share in the total export of goods from Iceland (which is more or less the same proportion as that of fish products).

Taking another page from the German system — this time, its apprenticeship program — training should include both internships and postgraduate job placements.

Once workers go on the Disability Insurance rolls, it has proved very hard to get them off; all the while, their skills and contacts in the workplace atrophy. In the fiscal year 2013, the program is estimated to have cost a record $144 billion.