WASHINGTON: The US government registered a record budget deficit in February despite rising revenues, setting a record 17th consecutive month in the red, the Treasury said on Wednesday.
The February budget shortfall was 220.909 billion dollars, a 14 percent rise from a year ago and the biggest monthly gap on record.
The reading, however, was slightly better [...]

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The worst ofGreece’s financial crisis is over and other European nations won’t follow in its path, said former European Commission President Romano Prodi.
“For Greece, the problem is completely over,” said Prodi, who was also Italian prime minister, in an interview in Shanghai today. “I don’t see any other case now in Europe. I don’t think there [...]

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Greece’s pledge to ramp up planned budget-deficit cuts by half failed to yield commitments of financial assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to help solve its financial crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the deficit-reduction measures announced in Athens [...]

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TOKYO : Japan’s lower house on Tuesday passed a record trillion-dollar budget for fiscal 2010, adding to the country’s bulging public debt burden as Tokyo tries to stimulate a sluggish economic recovery.
The 92.3 trillion yen (1.0 trillion dollar) budget includes new child-care allowances, free public high school tuition and other measures promised by the centre-left [...]

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While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.
Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a [...]

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NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks rallied Thursday as sentiment was lifted by an EU pledge to help Greece stave off a debt crisis and better-than-expected US labour market data.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average overcame a weak start and climbed 105.81 points (1.05 percent) to close at 10,144.19, rebounding from modest losses Wednesday.
The Nasdaq composite [...]

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BRUSSELS: EU heads of state and government will meet in Brussels Thursday for a summit focussed on supporting debt-laden Greece and preventing the crisis there from spreading to rest of the eurozone.
The Spanish EU presidency announced Wednesday that European nations would offer support to help Greece tackle its unprecedented deficit crisis, which poses a threat [...]

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Germany is considering loan guarantees for Greece and other troubled European countries, the Wall Street Journal reported, fueling hopes that the EU will work out some kind of rescue plan for debt-strapped Greece.
Germany’s Finance Ministry has reportedly been in discussions on such a plan with the head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, and [...]

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Let’s play a game. I’ll remove a few words from the following piece of debt market research and you guess which country the strategist author is talking about.
“The country urgently needs a credible and enforceable austerity plan — the worry for **** investors is that, despite all the **** posturing, politicians still fail to grasp [...]

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Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said he can’t call for outside aid as his government struggles to cut the European Union’s largest budget deficit.
“The worst possible signal which we could send out is one calling for outside help,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Athens yesterday. “We will tackle [...]

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