A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest

On a day when Greece called for new elections, with serious implications for the European economy and the future of the euro, the other country with elections on May 6 swore in their new President. Francois Hollande came to power in France calling for a return to growth rather than a single-minded focus on debt reduction and austerity in Europe. He called his program a new pact

It’s official: Greece will hold new elections after the various parties could not work out an agreement on a government after the Parliamentary vote on May 6. President Karolos Papoulias made the news today in a statement. The new elections should be held in mid-June.

Wisconsin’s Tea-GOP Governor Scott Walker campaigned on bringing 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin over his four-year term. A little over a year into that, as Minzie Chinn’s chart shows, he’s barely put jobs into positive territory. Reaching his 250,000 target would require average job growth equal to the strongest in Wisconsin history. Nonetheless, Walker is doubling down on the number.

We’ll probably get the final word today, but I think it’s safe to say there will not be a Greek government forming out of the most recent elections. After the top three vote-getting parties each tried and failed to form a government, the Greek President made one last plea to amass a government of national unity among a clatch of parties. However, The Radical Coalition of the Left, or Syriza, never attended the talks.

The deal to extend the payroll tax cut through the end of the year included a deal to “extend” unemployment benefits. I put “extend” in sarcasm quotes because the bill actually reduced that extension gradually. Instead of 99 weeks of unemployment to jobless workers in hard-hit states, the bill gradually backed that off to 79 weeks or less. This hurts the most vulnerable population in the labor force, the long-term unemployed, sadly a fast-growing sector even during this modest recovery.

We’re still in the posturing phase of the fiscal cliff situation, and now we have another data point. Harry Reid has come out and said pretty forcefully that he will not roll back the trigger, the automatic cuts to defense and discretionary spending due at the end of the year, without a “balanced” approach to replace them.

Room 148 of the State Capitol might as well double as a Capitol broom closet. That’s where the House Consumer Affairs Committee this morning rushed out amendments to House Bill 2191, which legalizes predatory payday lending in Pennsylvania.

Over those two weeks, the Spanish government definitively announced that they had slipped back into recession. They said that 5.6 million of their citizens were out of work, a number that represents nearly 1/4 of the labor force. Among the young, the jobless are a majority. As a tourist, it’s actually quite easy to go through your travels without a deep awareness of any of this. But a closer look begins to reveal the signs of a nation losing hope.

Francois Hollande’s victory in the French Presidential election, which may actually mean less for policy in France than meets the eye – in the end, you’re talking about center-left versus center-right – nonetheless has significant repercussions for Europe and the rest of the world. This is one of the only countries Germany needs to at least pay attention to, and the “Merkozy” alliance is now broken.