Check out this sick link

Bro. Money wanted us all to see THIS LINK of the Sistine Chapel, and it's great with the music too.

Greek Leader Vows to Stay and Fight Debt Crisis

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou called on party lawmakers Thursday to support his unpopular austerity measures. Mr. Papandreou insists that his country to continue and work itself out of the debt crisis it is facing right now. He gave these remarks after two Socialist deputies had resigned earlier that day in protest to the way their government was handling their economic crisis.

Mr. Papandreou acknowledged that his country had made mistakes, but he also promised that the European Union will come to their country's aid with an enormous loan deal. European Union econimcs commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statment Thursday that euro-zone goverments will agree at a meeting starting Sunday in Luxembourg to pay the next installment of rescue loans for Greece, while delaying the final decision on a longer-term Greek aid package until July.

Greece is due to receive €12 billion by the end of the month, with €8.7 billion coming from euro-zone governments and €3.3 billion from the IMF.

See the whole article here.

Turkey bans use of Google, services

Turkey has placed an indefinite ban on the use of the search engine Google for "legal" reasons. The country has also placed bans on google IP addresses without listing any reasons for doing so.

Other Google owned features, such as document sharing and YouTube have also been banned indefinitely in the country. Even Facebook is not allowed in Turkey. When people attempt to access those sites while within the borders of that country, they are brought to a site which tells them "access to this site is banned by court order."

Looks like we won't be able to use Facebook or Google while we're in Turkey. Oh darn.

You can see the full article here.

Italian Business Faces Lose-Lose Situation in Libya

100 years have passed since Italy invaded the province of Libya to liberate them from the oppressive Ottoman Empire. Now NATO aircraft are flying daily from Italian bases to pound forces controlled by the regime of Qaddafi, Italy's business is starting to take a hit.

Italian businesses are at risk of collateral damages whether the rebels are successful in this war or not. For some small and medium sized businesses in Italy, orders from Libya were the only ones they had. These orders refer to Libyan oil, which was of good quality and was easy to transport back to Italy.

As the war drags on, Italian businesses could lose as much as $140 billion in disrupted trade. It is considered that Italy is at a real risk that a "new Libya" would not be inclined to trade with Italy.

This same scenario also largely applies even if Qaddafi somehow remains in power.

You can read the article here.

Switzerland Decides on Nuclear Phase-Out

The swiss government decided to to abandon all of their plans on building new nuclear reactors to power their country, while other countries in the European Union have decided to stress test all of their own in light of Japan's situation.

An anti-nuclear rally that drew nearly 20,000 people may influenced the officials to make this permanent ban. The Cabinet stated that this decision was made to increase safety for the citizens of Switzerland and to reduce risks.

Eventually, all of the nuclear plants in Switzerland will be shut down. This phase-out process will take considerable time to allow the government to prepare another source of power for the country. This new switch could inevitably save money in the long run because the costs for safety of nuclear power were expected to rise anyway.

You can read the article here.

In Europe, Rift Widens Over Greece

The blame is falling on Greece about ruining the credit rating of all of the countries in Europe. Instead of the wealthier nations in the North however, the struggling countries of the south, Spain and Italy, are complaining to Greece about their economic state. They are worried that Greece's image will also reflect poorly on that of Spain and Italy and as a result their own credit rating will continue to drop.

On May 20th, Italy's S&P credit rating took a negative outlook which fueled their fire against the Greeks. With a debt of 120 percent of GDP, Italy's debt is one of the largest in Europe and they'll definitely be in need of help in the future.

You can read the entire article here.

S&P downgrades the ratings of Greek's bonds; Papademos explains what to do

As of a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal announced that S&P has recently downgraded the rating of a Greek bond from single-B to double-B minus.

Former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos, who also used to lead Greece's central bank, gives his advice as to Greece needs to know in order to address their debt crisis.

According to Papademos, Greece needs to announce a convincing medium-term fiscal consolidation program that would be more credible in the eyes of the market as well as the Greek public. This program will have to include "haircut" losses to investors of Greek businesses, but overall debt restructure should be avoided.

You can read this article here.