The World's Financial Crisis Is Not Going Away (Two Articles To Read)

A model of the artificial archipelago The World in Dubai Photo: EPA

Where Dubai Leads, Britain Could Soon Follow -- The Telegraph

The sovereign debt crisis shows that we cannot always rely on states to ride to the rescue, says Tracy Corrigan.

A hundred years ago, countries which seemed insufficiently motivated to pay their debts were frequently encouraged to do so by military force. In 1902, Britain, Germany, and Italy imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela. Soon afterwards, the South American state struck a deal with foreign bondholders

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The Olympic flame in Athens, 2004 – the costliest ever games.
Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP

The New Iceland? Greece Fights To Rein In Debt -- The Guardian

Fears of default grow as years of profligacy come home to roost.

The likelihood of Greece becoming the next Iceland and plunging into bankruptcy looms over a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels today as the Greeks prepare to take another pasting from their colleagues.

After years of profligacy, hosting the costliest Olympic games ever in 2004 and failing to rein in its spiralling public debt, the country was on the brink of defaulting on loans, according to some seasoned commentators.

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