Bailouts, Greece Bailout | featured news

Greece's new government promised on Thursday to renegotiate the terms of the country's bailout without endangering its future in the euro, responding to intense pressure to ease mounting social tensions but also risking a showdown with European powers.

Greece's new government is to ask lenders for two more years to hit fiscal targets, responding to huge public pressure for a softening of an international bailout but setting up a showdown with its euro zone partners.

Let Greece go: It's a possibility that's being considered more and more publicly in Europe. There have been two and a half years of bailouts, on top of broken promises by Greece to reform. The result: a fifth year of recession and, this week, political chaos. Voters on Sunday favored parties that either oppose the terms of the country's international bailout or want to renegotiate them. If it cannot get more rescue loans, Greece will go bankrupt and likely have to leave the eurozone, the currency union of 17 countries.

The leaders of Greece's once-dominant political parties made a last push on Friday to avert a new election, which a poll showed would give victory to a radical leftist and doom an EU bailout.

Debate over Greece’s rescue plan now shifts to the International Monetary Fund, which must decide if it is willing to risk more on a bailout effort that the fund’s own analysis shows has a strong probability of failing.

Latest austerity cuts approved as 100,000 take to the streets in protest; 93 buildings damaged in Athens.

Stocks tumbled for a second day Friday after concerns grew that the deep spending cuts under Europe's bailout plan would slow a global recovery.

The $147 billion, three-year bailout offered to Greece by euro-zone countries and the IMF won't be enough to cover Greece's costs, an examination of Greek financial figures shows.