Austerity Moves News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

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 there's more problems here in january. mass transit strike now in its 8th day. subways, buses, snarling traffic in athens and elsewhere. the workers are protesting salary cuts which have been put in place by the government, again part of austerity mo...

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 world's top private companies says he wants a firsthand look at the economy of one of the world's most closed societies, north korea. eric schmidt arrived there today with bill richardson. as the private trip. the obama administration has characterized it as no...

Greg talcott live in london with more on that for us. greg? >> reporter: avoid debt, jon, i think that's 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. let's 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 about 7% and trimming back of unemployment benefits from 60 to 50% of the final salary. spanish prim...

Coulding from the state level and that push. they're actually trying some of these austerity moves in different states across the country like ohio, new jersey, virginia. we're 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 didn't want any toys this holiday, just her dad. the story behind this video, wait until you see this, is next. bill: let's make her dreams come true. only a few months ago people were begging chris christie to run for president but could ...

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 that's what we're 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 we're talking about here? is it concern that the greek government won't move forward with the kind of austerity moves that are necessary to bring its house in order? >> that's part of it, but mostly it's ...