Europe's biggest economy is refusing to hand over any money to help the indebted Greek government until more due diligence is done to make sure the money from the bailout is not misused.

The heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank have appealed to Germany to make good on its promise to help debt-stricken Greece, saying Eurozone stability is hanging in the balance.

It follows a day of chaos on the financial markets after the downgrading of Greece's credit rating to junk bond status.

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Gus: when one is deliberately paying through the nose to buy junk from a friend in need, one has to know the friend is not going to waste the cash on booze...

The British Museum is Europe’s Western front in the global war over cultural patrimony, on account of the marbles. The pamphlets give the museum’s version for why they should stay in Britain, as they have for two centuries — ever since Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte at Constantinople, and with the consent of the ruling Ottomans (not to mention a blithe disregard for whatever may have been the wishes of the Greek populace), spirited them from the Acropolis in Athens. The pamphlet stresses that the British Museum is free and attracts millions of visitors every year from around the world, making the sculptures available to, and putting them in the context of, a wide swath of human civilization.

For their part the Greeks, before their economy collapsed, finally opened the long-delayed New Acropolis Museum last year to much fanfare: it’s an up-to-date facility, forbidding and frankly ugly outside, but airy and light-filled inside, a home-in-waiting for the marbles, whose absence is clearly advertised by bone-white plaster casts of what Elgin took, alongside yellowed originals that he left behind. The view through a broad picture window, eloquent but baleful under the circumstances, looks onto the ruined Parthenon, playing on visitors’ heartstrings. Greeks deem the museum a slam-dunk argument for the marbles’ return.

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Gus: as I have indicated in the top comment, Europeans museums exhibiting "Greek stolen goods" should pay a royalty for doing so... and this could go towards the repayment of the Greek debt... see toon at top.and read comment below it.

Greece is "on the brink of the abyss", President Karolos Papoulias has warned, after three people died during protests over planned austerity measures.

"We are all responsible so that it does not take the step into the void," the president said in a statement.

It followed a day of violence during which protesters set fire to a bank, killing three employees.

Greece's government has vowed to pursue the spending cuts - a condition of its 110bn euro ($142bn; £95bn) bail-out.

"We are prepared to pay the heavy political cost," Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou told parliament during Wednesday's debate on the bill.

"We will not take a single step backwards."

The euro hit a fresh 13-month low against the dollar and European stock markets were also hit, amid concerns over Greek bail-out plans.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH

After a brief respite following the announcement last week of a nearly $1 trillion bailout plan for Europe, fear in the financial markets is building again, this time over worries that the Continent’s biggest banks face strains that will hobble European economies.

In a sign of the depth of the anxiety, the euro fell Friday to its lowest level since the depth of the financial crisis, as investors abandoned the currency as well as stocks in favor of gold and other assets seen as offering more safety. And in an interview published Saturday, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, warned that Europe was facing “severe tensions” and that the markets were fragile.

Contagion, a loss of confidence that feeds on itself and leads investors to sell assets in one country after another, remained a possibility, he said.

For Europe’s banks, the problems are twofold. Short-term borrowing costs are rising, which could lead institutions to cut back on new loans and call in old ones, crimping economic growth.

At the same time, seemingly safe institutions in more solid economies like France and Germany hold vast amounts of bonds from their more shaky neighbors, like Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Investors fear that with many governments groaning under the weight of huge deficits, the debt of weaker nations that use the euro currency will have to be restructured, deeply lowering the value of their bonds. That would hit European financial institutions hard, and may ricochet through the global banking system.

Bourses and bank shares in Europe plunged on Friday because of these fears, with Wall Street following suit. Shares were also down in Tokyo and Australia in early trading on Monday.

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see toon at top...

Dozens of stone-throwing youths have clashed with police in Athens as public sector workers went out on strike in protest at Greece's austerity measures.

The 24-hour strike saw flights and ferry services cancelled, government offices and tourist sites closed, and hospitals working with reduced staff.

Many strikers expressed frustration and anger at the cuts.

The European Commission is discussing ways of propping up banks in Europe to protect them from the Greek crisis.

The general strike is the first since the Greek government announced an emergency property tax and the suspension of 30,000 public sector staff last month.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15177457

see toon and Gus' editorial at top...