Greece is being systematically raped, pillaged and destroyed. Bankers demand it. What they want, they get, no matter the human toll and economic ruin.

As sailors have known for thousands of years, when the rats get nervous, the boat has sprung a leak.

By Iglika Ivanova - CCPA

...[T]he [British Columbia] government decided not to tackle the serious social issues that BC families face: abject poverty and homelessness, growing income inequality and increasingly poor job quality. There is nothing in this budget to ensure that BC will be able to meet its climate commitments...Children, vulnerable seniors and British Columbians were asked to wait until the economy improves while the government chose to use its limited public resources to extend a tax break of up to $42,500 each to wealthy buyers of new homes...

By Julie Hyland - 22 February 2012

The €130 billion-plus (US$172 billion) package of loans agreed by euro zone finance ministers will not protect Greece from bankruptcy. It merely postpones the inevitable, while European and international finance capital use Greece as a testing ground for their scorched-earth policy of savage austerity being rolled out across the continent.

By Noam Chomsky - February 14, 2012

American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster. Despite the piteous laments, the U.S. remains the world dominant power by a large margin, and no competitor is in sight, not only in the military dimension, in which of course the U.S. reigns supreme.

Predatory bankers are destroying economies and people for profit.

By Panagiotis Sotiris - February 14, 2012

Greece is becoming the test site for an extreme case of neo-liberal social engineering. The terms of the new bailout package from the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the so-called ‘troika’, equal a carpet bombing of whatever is left of collective social rights and represent an extreme attempt to bring wage levels and workplace [conditions] back to the 1960s.

By Nick Beams - WSWS

More than a third of the nation is officially designated as living in poverty. Unemployment now exceeds one million people...The youth unemployment rate is close to 50 percent...Since the global financial crisis began in 2008, it is estimated that at least 20,000 people have been made homeless. People are sleeping on pavements, park benches, in train stations, shopping arcades and doorways. The Greek Orthodox Church says it is feeding 250,000 people a day.

Official government data are manipulated. Credibility's entirely lacking. Reported good news is hype. Grim underlying reality is suppressed.

By Robert Stevens - 8 February 2012

Talks held Tuesday night between the three parties making up the Greek government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos failed to finalize the cuts demanded of it in return for a €130 billion rescue package...The talks between the social democratic PASOK party, the conservative New Democracy and the neo-fascist LAOS broke up after the three parties reached agreement on a new round of savage attacks on social services, jobs and wages, but failed to adopt the full range of cuts demanded by the so-called “troika”...

Reporting it doesn't make it so. In fact, it's more illusion than fact, but that doesn't surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data.

By Nick Beams - WSWS

The [austerity] measures are believed to include a 25 percent cut in the minimum private sector wage and a 35 percent reduction in supplementary pensions...The cut in the minimum wage would see a reduction from about $1,000 per month to $750, approximately the same level as in Portugal. This will have a devastating impact on wide layers of the population in conditions where consumer prices are relatively high...Unemployment in Greece is already 20 percent, businesses are closing every day and homelessness is on the rise.

January 31, 2012 - CBC News

A new report echoes what Occupy protesters across B.C. were saying last year — there's a growing gap in the province between rich and poor...And the report does not come from a left-leaning organization, but from BC Stats, the agency that crunches numbers for the provincial government...“Given the size and vehemence of the Occupy protests, one would suspect that the current income gap is too large..."

By Murray Dobbin - rabble.ca

So having succeeded in giving capitalists everything they asked for...what do we have?...[W]hile the advertising and marketing of more and more stuff goes on apace, the facts facing working- and middle-class families paint a totally unsustainable spending picture: some 60 per cent of wage and salary earners state that they are one pay-cheque away from financial insolvency; the Canadian savings rate is the lowest it's been for decades...the net real increase in average pay between 1980 and 2005 was a grand total of $51.

Global economic decline is deepening.