Austerity Moves News Today

Debt. that however, with the european central bank offering, a big help, maybe big encouragement from washington as well. martha. martha: they have a long way to go to dig out of that hole. greece also continues to be in a really tough situation, greg. >> reporter: yeah. greece is the country, remember, that started all of these euro headaches and theres more problems here in january. mass transit strike now in its 8th day. subways, buses, snarling traffic in athens and elsewhere. the workers ar...

Troops landed in turkey along with missile says only to protect turkish airspace not to enforce no-fly zones. >> world reaction to his speech range from dismissal to out right disgust. he has had a uncanny ability to stay in power long after people wrote him off. with the rebels the number may be growing. >> bret: the head of one of the worlds top private companies says he wants a firsthand look at the economy of one of the worlds most closed societies, north korea. eric schmidt arrived there to...

Greg talcott live in london with more on that for us. greg? >> reporter: avoid debt, jon, i think thats the bottom line. there is a lot of pain in spain this week. the government introducing those austerity moves in response to an e.u. bailout of their ailing banks and slightly easier conditions to reduce that debt. lets take a look at what those cuts are all about. number one, a hike in the value-added or national sales tax in spain from 18 to 21%. also cuts in civil servant pay amounting to ab...

Coulding from the state level and that push. theyre actually trying some of these austerity moves in different states across the country like ohio, new jersey, virginia. were seeing the backlash in some cases. a tough thing to accomplish. very interesting, talk with case i can there. so, how about this, a very early christmas surprise for a kansas girl who didnt want any toys this holiday, just her dad. the story behind this video, wait until you see this, is next. bill: lets make her dreams com...

Going up, too, tony. the stocks have been up for eight weeks solidly, so for a few days people were saying will it be the oil spill? will it be greece? what will they pin their hats on that might be a reason to sell stocks so thats what were seeing, but it is a pretty vigorous sell-off, i would say. >> back to the greece side of the story for a moment. >> sure. >> what are the politics that were talking about here? is it concern that the greek government wont move forward with the kind of auster...

But before they left the room, they said dont touch ours. >> both men said they wanted to lay out a starting point to give an idea of what it would take to fix the finances. members of the commission reacting waryly but one said the plan made clear to all the enormity of the problem. >> i give him very high marks for being bold and producing a plan that does get us back on a sustainable course. >> stinson said they harpooned every whale and even some minnows. bowl said its the predictable crisis...