Riots Erupt After Greek Parliament Passes More Cuts

Greece has been a constant worry for international investors since it became clear several years ago that the country is in major debt. Greece's problems have become the world's because it is part of the European Union, which shares a single currency and functions as one economic area.

More prosperous European countries like Germany have put together a bailout package for Greece designed to help it pay its debts and keep all of Europe out of economic trouble. But, one condition of the bailout is that Greece pass major spending cuts, known as "austerity measures," that affect thousands of government workers and programs Greeks depend upon.

Greek parliament just passed the latest, harshest of those cuts, which prompted thousands of Greeks to take to the streets in protest. They burned, looted and wrecked buildings and cars, and more than 120 were hurt as a result.

The spending cuts will allow the International Monetary Fund, an organization of countries designed to maintain global financial health, to release $170 billion in loans to Greece. Greece will use the money to pay off its debts and keep from going back on its financial obligations to creditors.

Greece spent too much for decades

	Prime Minister Lucas Papademos came into office on a platform of making the necessary spending cuts to keep Greece in the European Union.

To make matters worse, the government hid the problem with accounting tricks until 2009. When a new prime minister took office, he discovered that Greece owned much more money than it said it did, and European bankers started to panic.

Greece recently elected a new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, who has seen the latest government spending cuts through Parliament at the urging of European leaders.

The Eurozone - linked in currency and economy

	The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar.

Not all EU countries use the Euro, but the 17 that do are commonly known as the “Eurozone.” They are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

Being united by a currency means that eurozone economies are also closely linked economically. Every time Greece has gotten close to defaulting on its debts, or failing to pay what it owes its creditors, other EU member states have given it money, or a “bailout,” to avoid a collapse of the entire eurozone economy.

Many people in the largest eurozone countries that have provided most of the bailout money, like Germany and France, are getting fed up with having to pay for Greece’s debt problems. “That entire country has no sense of responsibility, and now we're supposed to fix it," Karen Schumann, a 27-year-old German, told Time magazine after the first bailout from Germany. Eurozone countries are meeting in Brussels to decide whether to enlarge their bailout fund, or the amount of money they can use to help struggling member countries like Greece.

Life in Greece is getting harder

	"The Greeks simply need to accept the challenge and reinterpret the crisis as a chance for a new beginning," said Vasiliki Mitrakos, a Greek-American student reporter.

“Cuts and tax increases are not easy to accept,especially when a large portion of the population is used to avoiding taxes and finding long-term job security in the public sector,” writes Vasiliki Mitrakos, a Greek-American student reporter who traveled to Athens recently and witnessed the protests.

“Many families or individuals dearly depend on state assistance or government employment.” Alexis Georgiadis, another Greek-American student reporter, writes: “There are more empty, boarded-up shops, more immigrants selling counterfeit bags outside the metro stations, and generally, I felt my Greek family and friends were more melancholic.

However, they all agreed that the bureaucratic issues that Greece has today are the same issues that existed decades ago.”