More than 30,000 people have joined demonstrations in Athens as workersd held a nationwide strike to show their anger over the country’s deepening financial crisis.

Street clashes erupted on the sidelines of the protest in the capital, with masked youths smashing shop fronts and knocking police off motorbikes.

More from the Wall Street Journal:

Violence broke out between police and protesters in central Athens on Thursday as an estimated 30,000 people gathered to demonstrate against the government’s austerity program as part of a nationwide general strike.

Riot police fired tear gas after clashing with several hundred anarchists, who responded by throwing projectiles. Hooded youths representing Greece’s anarchist movement also attacked shop fronts, smashed the windows of one hotel and set alight a car just off one of the city’s main streets. Black smoke from the burning car billowed over the student district of Athens, the site of frequent violent protests.

Greece’s two umbrella unions, the private-sector GSEE and the public-sector ADEDY, called the strike to protest the €4.8 billion ($6.55 billion) package of spending cuts and tax increases that the government announced March 3, and which was voted into law March 5. The communist-backed PAME union held a separate protest with more than 5,000 people.

The strike has affected public transport, government ministries and state-owned companies, while all flights into and out of the country have been grounded, and all ferry and rail services have been suspended.

On the streets of Athens, normal workday activity was muted. Strike posters hung on street lights and road signs announced a protest rally. Morning news shows on local television were replaced with alternative programming.

“No to unjust and antisocial measures,” said ADEDY on its Web site. “The current policies are bankrupting the lives of salaried workers and pensioners.”

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Icelanders vote in a referendum on Saturday on a $5 billion deal to repay Anglo-Dutch loans, with an expected resounding “No” set to further delay foreign aid and hopes for economic recovery. Despite the consequences of rejecting the standing deal, Icelanders are angry about what they see as harsh repayment terms from Britain and the Netherlands and they are now certain they can get a much better deal. The referendum looks like a one-way bet with no political parties backing the deal agreed in late 2009, not even Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir who brokered the agreement.

Sigurdardottir has vowed to stay on after the near certain referendum defeat and said that a quick solution to the Icesave saga was “a matter of life or death for the Icelandic economy.”

“The bill is literally an ‘orphaned’ law since there is nobody fighting for it,” she told reporters on Friday, adding that “it is quite clear it will be rejected.”

Britain and the Netherlands have offered easier terms, so there is no reason for voters to back the old deal.

“It’s of utmost importance that we don’t over-interpret whatever message comes out of this. We want to be perfectly clear that a ‘No’ vote does not mean we are refusing to pay,” Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told reporters.

“We will honor our obligations. To maintain anything else is highly dangerous for the economy of this country.”

Foreign Minister Ossur Skarphethinsson told Reuters that he expected a new Icesave deal “in the next weeks, perhaps sooner. The economy minister said a several month delay would shave 2-3 points off GDP in 2010.

Venting Anger
The ballot gives Icelanders, who have lost 30 percent of their disposable income since 2007, an opportunity to vent anger at the bankers and politicians in Reykjavik who they blame for the island’s meltdown.
In the referendum, Iceland’s 230,000 voters will be asked whether to approve a deal on paying money back to Britain and the Netherlands, after they compensated savers in their countries who had lost money in Icesave accounts.

Sigurdardottir said Britain and the Netherlands were holding Iceland “hostage” by linking the Icesave issue to Reykjavik receiving the next tranche of aid from the International Monetary Fund. With the cash in its coffers, Iceland would be able to open its borders to capital flows that feed investments.

The Icesave debt amounts to more than $15,000 for every one of Iceland’s 320,000 people, though most of the money is likely to be raised eventually by the sale of assets of Landsbanki, which operated Icesave accounts before folding late in 2008.

The Icesave row with the two European Union countries has also rekindled anti-EU sentiment at a time when Brussels has invited Reykjavik to begin accession negotiations.

Support for membership has been falling in past months and is now opposed by more than half of Icelanders, nearly twice the level seen just after the 2008 collapse.

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A wave of unrest is building across Europe, as governments there seek to impose austerity measures. Several European countries — Greece, Spain and Ireland — are deeply in debt and under intense pressure to slash spending. For more, Martin Savidge interviews John Authers of the Financial Times.

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A clip from the World Economic Forum with Lawrence Summers in conversation with Charlie Rose.

Lawrence Summers, Director of the U.S. National Economic Council, laments the financial lobbyists on Capitol Hill, where they outnumber members of congress 3 to 1. “Our challenge now is to put in place a new system,” he says, “that will hold and substantially reduce the risk of crisis for a generation.”

Nice of Larry to find religion this late in life. You can, apparently, teach an old dog new tricks.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich warns easy money and stimulative policies may be creating the next global economic bubbles. He speculates that the two most worrisome candidates within the next year are commodities and China.

Is the U.S. economy showing signs of recovery, as some indicators suggest, or are these assertions dangerously premature?

Having served in three administrations, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is uniquely positioned to share his take on the 2010 economic outlook for California, the U.S., and the rest of the world in this year’s annual installment of the Walter E. Hoadley Economic Forecast. – Commonwealth Club

Robert Reich is professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. He served in three national administrations; his articles appear frequently in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and he is a commentator for American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” heard on NPR.

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The International Monetary Fund is forecasting positive growth in 2010; yet, it warns the pace of growth will be too sluggish to prevent further increases in unemployment across the global economy.

Martin Wolf notes the global economic recovery might be described by the acronym L-U-V. The recovery has been L-shaped in the European Union, U-shaped in the United States and V-shaped in East Asia (ex-Japan).

What is the outlook for the global economy in 2010?

The Panelists
Josef Ackermann, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank, Germany; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum; Chair of the Governors Meeting for Financial Services 2010; Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010
Montek S. Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, India
Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economy, Industry and Employment of France; Member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Washington DC
Lawrence H. Summers, Director, National Economic Council (NEC), Executive Office of the President, USA
Zhu Min, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China, People’s Republic of China; Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System

The panel is chaired by Martin Wolf, Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Systemic Financial Risk.

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Multilateral trade, climate change, Millennium Development Goals and nuclear non-proliferation are just some of the items on the global agenda in which the world expects India to play an active and constructive role.

What does the world expect from India and what does India expect from the international community?

In partnership with the World Economic Forum, India’s NDTV hosts this debate focusing on the global expectations for and from India.

Panelists
Robert D. Hormats, US Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs
Anand G. Mahindra, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, India
Zakir Mahmood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Habib Bank, Pakistan
Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce and Industry of India
Rajat Gupta, former managing director of McKinsey & Company in the United States and a current special advisor on management reforms to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The panel is moderated by Vikram Chandra, Chief Presenter and Editor, NDTV, India

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Greece’s budget deficit stands at 12.7 percent of GDP or more than four times the Eurozone limit.

Earlier this week, Greece had planned to sell €5 billion (£4.4 billion) of new five-year bonds to investors, but, after about €25 billion of demand emerged, it decided to issue €8 billion. The auction had been seen as a key test of investors’ appetite for Greek government debt and was heralded as a triumph by the Greek authorities in Athens. But others are not so sure noting that Greece paid a hefty 6.22 percent rate to borrow money in the bond market.

More from the New York Times:

European leaders are quietly considering whether to come to the aid of their troubled neighbor Greece amid fears that the nation might default on its debts and unleash another round of financial crisis.

Only a month after Dubai was rescued by its neighboring emirate Abu Dhabi, Germany, France and other European powers are discussing whether Greece might need a bailout too.

After a decade of debt-fueled profligacy, Greece is confronting what amounts to a run on the bank. And, despite repeated assurances from Athens, the nation’s strained finances have put already jittery financial markets on edge. On Thursday, the worries stretched all the way to Wall Street, where the stock market sank 1.1 percent.

Some economists worry that Greece’s troubles could have deep and lasting repercussions for Europe. The crisis poses complex challenges for the euro, which Greece adopted in 2001. The currency sank to a six-month low against the dollar and yen on Thursday.

“Greece failing is not an option, and lots of people think that we will have to intervene at some stage,” said one European finance official, who was not permitted to speak publicly on the matter. “It doesn’t have to happen, and we hope it won’t, but it would be better than seeing a default.”

The shape and scale of a bailout package, if any, has yet to be determined, according to officials in several European capitals. Whether the International Monetary Fund might become involved is uncertain. Some European leaders want Europe to fix this problem itself, while others are open to working with the I.M.F.

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The EU budget deficit was only 2% in 2008, but it is now expected to balloon to nearly 7% of gross domestic product for member economies as a whole in 2010.

How can Europe repair its damaged public finances and still maintain its course for economic recovery?

The Panelists
Lech Kaczynski, President of Poland
Yves Leterme, Prime Minister of Belgium
George A. Papandreou, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece
José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain
Jean-Claude Trichet, President, European Central Bank, Frankfurt
Valdis Zatlers, President of Latvia

This panel is moderated by Robin Niblett, Director, Chatham House, United Kingdom; Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance

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Africa’s growth strategy is developing new plot lines as the International Monetary Fund expects growth in sub-Saharan Africa to be 1% above the global average; trade with China now tops US$ 100 billion a year.

How is Africa’s growth strategy changing and what will it reveal in 2010 and beyond?

The Panelists
Donald Kaberuka, President, African Development Bank (ADB), Tunis
Jakaya M. Kikwete, President of Tanzania
Li Ruogu, Chairman and President, Export-Import Bank of China, People’s Republic of China; Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System
Jubril Adewale Tinubu, Group Chief Executive, Oando, Nigeria; Young Global Leader; Global Agenda Council on the Future of Africa

The panel is moderated by Maria Ramos, Group Chief Executive, Absa Group, South Africa; Global Agenda Council on the Future of Africa

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