World Debt Crisis

THEY barely dare say it, but the doctors are strangely confident: after a long illness, the euro may be recovering. This week’s all-night surgery by finance ministers to excise a festering lump of Greek debt went better than expected. “We have put in place almost all of the elements we [...]

The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period. Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by [...]

“I HAVE learnt that marathon is indeed a Greek word.” Thus spoke Olli Rehn, the European monetary affairs commissioner, at the end of a 14-hour negotiating session that produced a second bailout package for Greece this morning. This had been agreed in principle at a European summit in July last [...]

Mitt Romney has had a tough week, Newt Gingrich a tough month, Barack Obama a tough three years. But hey, they could be Ron Wyden. Ticked off by Washington’s failure to tackle big problems? Spare a moment for Oregon’s senior senator. Mr. Wyden is the Democrat who in December had [...]

AMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end [...]

“The rate of unemployment in the United States has exceeded 8 percent since February 2009, making the past three years the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent until [...]

Rioters torched shops and offices, with banks and foreign businesses the main targets. Pensioners wearing gas masks joined a blockade of Parliament and squared off against some 4,000 police officers. The city’s best-known cinema was burned to the ground, along with nine other national-heritage sites. This was Athens on Sunday [...]

Federal budgets are by definition political documents, but even by that standard yesterday’s White House proposal for fiscal year 2013 is a brilliant bit of misdirection. With the abracadabra of a tax increase on the wealthy and defense spending cuts that will never materialize, the White House asserts that in [...]

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin is starting to feel surrounded. On her state’s southern border, Texas has no income tax. Now two of its other neighbors, Missouri and Kansas, are considering plans to cut and eventually abolish their income taxes. “Oklahoma doesn’t want to end up an income-tax sandwich,” she quips. [...]

Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama administration over mandated contraception services, must be permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about the innate tensions between the state and its citizens. [...]