From the Associated Press:
Deadly riots over harsh new austerity measures engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, killing three bank workers as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of nationwide strikes to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) bailout package of loans to keep it from defaulting.
The three bank workers–a man and two women–died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens. As their colleagues sobbed in the street, five other bank workers were rescued from the balcony of the burning building.
“A demonstration is one thing and murder is quite another!” Prime Minister George Papandreou thundered in Parliament during a session to discuss the spending cuts he announced Sunday–measures even the IMF has called draconian. Lawmakers held a minute of silence for the dead–the first deaths during a protest in Greece since 1991.
“We are all concerned by Greece’s economic and budgetary situation but at this time our thoughts are with the human victims in Athens,” European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said in Brussels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the bailout critical for all of Europe.
“Nothing less than the future of Europe, and with that the future of Germany in Europe, is at stake,” Merkel told lawmakers in Berlin, urging them to quickly pass the country’s share of the bailout–euro22 billion ($28 billion) over three years–by Friday. “We are at a fork in the road.”
Continue reading here. The United States is also approaching a similar fork in the road. In Greece, half of all workers are government employees. We aren’t anywhere close to this, but, increasingly, public sector unions at the local, state and federal levels are dictating government policy. They are fueling a spending binge that will eclipse this current crisis in Greece.
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