FBI Director James B. Comey is now himself the subject of a Justice Department investigation. Initiated as a response to complaints from members of Congress, the Department’s Inspector General plans to scrutinize the way that Comey handled the case surrounding Hillary Clinton’s emails during the election.…
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The decision by four U.S. intelligence chiefs to present both President Obama and President-elect Trump with a synopsis of allegations that the Russian possess compromising material on Trump indicates that things are getting quite serious.…
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“Your organization’s terrible.” That was President-elect Trump’s response to CNN’s Jim Acosta in today’s press conference, the first in over 160 days. “I’m not going to give you a question, you are fake news,” he added. Trump took aim at CNN because it had reported Tuesday that the heads of U.S. intelligence had briefed the…
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While concerns over unprecedented conflicts of interests regarding Trump’s cabinet picks mount, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a memorable letter to the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, warning Republicans that all cabinet members must meet standards of accountability on ethics, regardless which party is in power.…
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Few could forget President-elect Trump’s pre-election campaign promise that his administration would build a “big, beautiful wall” along the US-Mexico border.…
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In a conversation we had before a broadcast interview in 2012, the chief of the IMF’s mission in Athens and current head of the Fund’s European department, Poul Thomsen, acknowledged that Greece’s financial rescue plan was an experiment carrying a high risk of failure.…
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The spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank have been kicked off in Washington DC. During these meetings, the Greek government is hoping that there might be some positive developments regarding its efforts to begin the political discussions with its European lenders and the IMF about an essential debt relief which…
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Last week’s attacks on Brussels exacerbate already existing tensions over freedom of movement and deepening integration. Thanos Dimadis contends that we should think twice before giving in to our fears. Thanos Dimadis is a news correspondent in Washington DC for the biggest media organization in Greece, ALPHA TV. He was previously a correspondent in Brussels.…
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It’s been almost less than one year ago when Greece holds a referendum the essential question of which was whether or not the Greek people want Greece to stay in the Europe by keeping being a member of the euro currency. At that time, thousands of Greeks poured into the streets outside of the Hellenic…
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In a few days, my flight is scheduled to return to Greece. It’ll be a short trip for a couple of weeks to see my relatives and friends there that I haven’t seen since last November. It was then that I decided to leave my homeland in Athens for a second time in my recent…
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What has been deployed over the last few of weeks, since the new elected Greek government unleashed its efforts to convince some of its European partners to align with it against the austerity oriented and Germany driven policies in Europe, is a game of power directly connected with the question of who finally has the…
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While the European project is struggling to remain afloat through the destructive, vicious circle of austerity and dogmatic monetary policy choices that have been made over the last five years in the euro zone, the United States seems to be overcoming the crisis started in 2008 by following the opposite approach from Europe. Although the…
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Since 2010, when it was excluded from the markets, Greece has lost most of its sovereignty by surrendering unconditionally to its lenders the power of taking important decisions about its future. As a result, the Greek governments, including the current one, became accountable not to the people that they were voted in by, but to…
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Having recently had a most interesting interview with the European Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, I realized how much Europe struggles to tackle contradictory interests and views in a unified framework of solidarity among European members’ states. What I noticed then was that the word “solidarity” was mentioned several times by Barroso while we were…
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One of the major mistakes that international and European observers often make in their analyses about Greece is that they focus way too much on the problem rather than the roots of it. The nature of these roots is much more political rather than an economic one. For example we have heard many a time…
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The U.S. president’s reelection in November seems to be more and more uncertain as the financial storm in Europe continues to devastate people’s and the markets’ hopes that European leaders will finally find a way to put an end to the current eurozone drama. Although the constant calls made from U.S. President Barack Obama, Treasury…
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