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    Howard Fineman

    Howard Fineman

    Global Editorial Director, HuffPost

  • Greece Is Just The Beginning Of The Great Austerity Backlash

    The global politics of austerity seeped into the press room of the White House on Monday, the day after the Greeks voted overwhelmingly to reject a harsh bailout deal with Europe. Reporters pressed Josh Earnest, President Barack Obama’s spokesman, for details of what his boss thought of the vote and of the bailout deal, and whether he agreed with 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that the latter was outrageous. Earnest answered with streams of polite words that added up to ... nothing.

  • Hoard Your Toilet Paper -- The Left Is Coming!

    Greece gave us democracy and theater, and now is giving us a gripping new synthesis of the two: the dramatic, hysterical alarms of supporters of austerity. Facing slow growth and crushing debt, “Austerian” leaders in democracies such as Greece, Spain, France, the U.K., (and, until not long ago, Japan) clamped down on social welfare spending and eased regulation of business. On Sunday, Greece chose as its new prime minister a 40-year-old leftist, Alexis Tsipras, who vows to renegotiate $272 billion in foreign loans while amping up government wages and spending.

  • China's Love-Hate Relationship With America

    The newest and most compelling one is their intensifying love-hate view of America.   This isn’t just a sociological curiosity. Officials refer vaguely but ominously to unseen “parties and forces” that work in Vietnam these days.   Neither do they like the president’s show of support for the Philippines, which has long-running territorial disputes with China over the sea between them.   Now comes the unexpected U.S. indictment of five Chinese army members on industrial espionage charges.