Greece Passes Austerity Bill

Violence in Greece showed no signs of slowing down as protesters of a new austerity bill continued to clash with Athens police. In order to secure $140 billion in rescue loans, the struggling Greek government trimmed the national budget by $38 billion, cutting back pensions and paychecks while raising taxes. Greek citizens and the nation’s Communist Party have responded with increasingly violent protests, and on Wednesday a firebomb in a bank killed three people. The budget cuts come in response to a massive debt crisis in the country, and Finance Minister George Papconstantinou said, “We have done what was necessary, not what was easy. Without these measures, we’d be thrown into the deepest recession this country has ever known.”