the wake of the greek debt crisis. as italy s former central bank chief took over the e.c.b. in november 20th 11 economists and the media were skeptical the global financial crisis was still reverberating through markets and the euro zone member greece was close to economic collapse but turkey didn t hesitate he set about encouraging lending within the eurozone with a string of rate cuts in march 26th seen they reached a historic low of 0 percent he s even handing on negative interest rates to his successor christine legarde something once considered thinkable the e.c.b. also bought 2.6 trillion euros of sovereign bonds from financially weaken member states and later private company bonds the cash injection saw the eurozone economy pick up speed again and unemployment reseed critics say asset purchases are a form of borrowing against future generations but doing whatever it takes to put
protests erupting on the streets of spain where the government there has just requested a massive bailout of its troubled banking system. spain is now the fourth euro zone member to do that in less than two years. ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro as a currency say that they are ready to give spain up to $125 billion. greg burke brings us the latest from rome. rick, big news coming from the euro zone today and it s coming from a big country, spain finally admitting that it does need a bailout of some sort. this is crunch time for europe. it s one thing for greece to be in trouble, but spain is the euro zone s fourth largest economy. spanish finance ministers saying that this is a loan, a loan from europe under favorable conditions, but emphasizing that it is not a rescue, so technically not a bailout. specifically for the banking sector. they have not given numbers, but
the french philosopher who was responsible for getting france and perhaps the world to intervene there. he s just back from tripoli. then as another baseball season comes to a close in america, we sit down with michael lewis, the author of moneyball, to talk about baseball and its lessons for business and life. but first, here s my take. regular gps watchers will know that i was in tehran last week to interview president mahmoud ahmadinejad. you can go to our website and watch excerpts of the interview. but being in iran made me think it abouot our policy toward that country which strikes me as being stuck in a time warp. you will remember that early in the 2008 presidential campaign, barack obama signaled that he was going to have a different foreign policy than george bush, less black and white. and he chose as his example, iran. he argued that simply pressuring the country was not a policy, and obama offered to talk to iran s leaders to try to establish a dialogue a
haul. more than 700,000 are without electricity there. utility crews are out right now assessing the damage. connecticut light and power says all of the cities and towns its services were impacted by the storm and us it could be a week before all power is restored. cnn crews working every angle of this major storm. susan is in new york, chad meyers in pennsylvania and jacqui jeras is in the severe weather center. let s go first to new york city. the metro area there. fun for some, a nightmare for others. that freak winter storm gave one family a jack-o-lantern snowman in new jersey. a couple of miles from the hudson river and downtown manhattan. let s go to manhattan where we find our susan candiotti. the snowfall has caused a lot of headaches there, although the sun is finally shining behind you? it s beautiful here, but i think everyone would agree when you re flying during the winter, there can always be problems. there were problems and it isn t even winter yet. most of
to me. what happens when you mix ideology with deception? and undercover activist james o keefe has a new media target. we discovered something else interesting about huffington post reporter sam stine. he accuses the reporter of getting his sources drunk. is this the new face of conservative journalism? plus, as facebook reveals more and more about us, is privacy passe? why is blogger jeff jarvis revealing so much about his personal life? we ll ask him. i m howard kurtz, and this is reliable sources. every week it seems there s another one, and there are at least a dozen more to go televised drama featuring mit and rick and herman and newt and michele and the rest of the gang. but these primetime programs, are they really about chris wallace and anderson cooper and wolf blitzer and brian williams and charlie rose? it s time now to meet the 2012 republican presidential contenders. here s the format for our debate tonight. let s get to it and meet the c