Eric Zuesse writes:  China is demanding refund of $1.5 billion in cash and of an additional $1.5 billion in Chinese goods that were paid in advance by China (in 2013), for a 2012 Chinese order of grain from Ukraine, which goods still have not been supplied to China.

Alex Luponosov, a Ukrainian authority on Ukraine’s banking system, says, “Ukraine won’t be able to supply the grain to China, because we don’t have it.” The reason he gives is that “there is a big shortage of technicians: combiners, adjusters, mechanics, farm-machinery operators — all of them were taken by the army.” Those men are being required to fight in Ukraine’s ‘ATO’ or ‘Anti Terrorist Operation,’ that’s occurring in Ukraine’s former Donbass region (the far-eastern tip of Ukraine), the place where the residents don’t accept the new Ukrainian Government’s legitimacy.

The RIAN report says that, “China is angry,” and it closes: “By the way, in addition to China’s $3B loan that’s to be repaid with grain [which cannot be supplied], Ukraine also received from China a $3.6 billion loan to pay for the gasification of coal, by Ukraine’s gas company, Naftogaz, which the Ukrainian Government has guaranteed up to 2.3 billion dollars. Information on the implementation of the coal-gasification project has not been made available, but there seems to be a high probability that this matter too will be decided in a court. If China decides to call in that loan, then the result will be the bankruptcy of either Naftogaz, or the Ukrainian Government.

The IMF, and other lenders, require Ukraine to win this war, because, if the Ukrainian Government doesn’t win, the natural gas and other assets that are in the ground in that region will not become available to be sold off by the Ukrainian Government in order to pay-off those investors; instead, the residents there (the people whom the Ukrainian Government is now trying to eliminate will control those assets, as being assets of a separate state — one which has not borrowed from these investors. The IMF wants the assets that are in the ground.

Sunday’s elections in Greece have brought Tsipras and his Syriza party closerto power.  In 2012, when Alexis Tsipras last ran to be prime minister of Greece, his compatriots were quite literally killing themselves in public squares because of the tough austerity measures that had strangled the country’s economy.

His alternative-left Syriza party, he said, may be the ticket out of the hell that Greece has become.  Tsipras did well on the reent ballot, perhaps because Greece has gotten worse. More than 200,000 Greeks have left the country in the last five years, and austerity has forced many businesses to shutter up or go off the radar. Greece’s black market economy is now estimated to account for nearly half of the country’s GDP.

There are also signs that Europeans in other countries who once fought to keep the eurozone intact at any cost now feel they could get along pretty well without Greece. After all, it has a population of only 11 million in a European Union of 500 million and it represents only about 1.4 percent of the union’s GDP.

Tsipras has promised the Greeks that Europe needs them and has no choice but to renegotiate Greece’s bailout debt conditions. And Greeks like what they hear.

Tsipras argues that in order to stay in the eurozone, Greece’s ruling party has negotiated a foolhardy payment schedule for its $378 million bailout debt that makes it impossible for the country to grow. The current repayment plan is 175 percent of the gross domestic product, and Tsipras wants a better deal, starting with his demand that Europe should simply erase most of the Greek debt.

The lessons the young leader has learned since the last elections are apparent. He has traded what amounted to fear-mongering in his last electoral campaign for consensus building, starting with a promise to some of his former naysayer European leaders. Many of Europe’s struggling countries have launched their own versions of alternative leftist Syriza parties and Tsipras had made the rounds to Italy, Spain and Portugal in recent months.

In 2012, Tsipras gave wide ranging interviews to most people who cared enough to ask. This time around, he is writing op-eds in Europe’s largest newspapers to garner support not only for voting Greeks who have moved abroad, but to get Europe’s other austerity-suffering countries to back the debt reshuffling proposal with the idea that such a precedent could help them, too.

Tsipras has come a long way in just a few years, but not all of Europe is optimistic about a Tsipras-led Greece. In an interview ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, which owns a lot of the Greek debt, quashed Tsipras’s debt renegotiation promise and said there is very little wiggle room when it comes to renegotiating debt.

Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the influential Eurogroup of European ministers agreed. “There’s no political support to write off Greek debt,” he said.

And in Germany, there was that Der Spiegel report that the German government would rather have a Greek-free euro than open the way for a trend that would be costly to the richer nations.

Greece rejected the punishing economics of austerity on Sunday and sent a warning signal to the rest of Europe as the left-wing Syriza party won a decisive victory in national elections, positioning its tough-talking leader, Alexis Tsipras, to become the next prime minister.

With 60 percent of the vote counted, Syriza had 36 percent, almost eight points ahead of the governing center-right New Democracy Party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had conceded defeat. The only uncertainty was whether Syriza would muster an outright parliamentary majority or if it would have to form a coalition.

Appearing before a throng of supporters outside Athens University late Sunday night, Mr. Tsipras, 40, declared that the era of austerity was over and promised to revive the Greek economy. He also said his government would not allow Greece’s creditors to strangle the country.

“Greece will now move ahead with hope, and reach out to Europe, and Europe is going to change,” he said. “The verdict is clear: We will bring an end to the vicious circle of austerity.”

Maher Chmaytelli writes: It is expected that King Salman, Saudi Arabia’s new ruler, will continue the policy of maintaining crude output to preserve market share even as prices have plunged.

Salman, 79, issued a royal decree to retain current ministers, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. Al-Naimi led OPEC’s Nov. 27 decision to maintain its crude production even as shale supplies spurred U.S. output to the highest in three decades. Salman said on Saudi national television that he will maintain the policies of his predecessor.

With production of 9.5 million barrels a day and exports of 7 million, Saudi Arabia accounts for more than a 10th of global supply and a fifth of crude sold internationally. The country’s refusal to surrender market share to rising U.S. output has contributed to the worst slump in prices since the global credit crisis of 2008.

Brent crude oil, the global benchmark, rose as much as 2.6 percent to $49.80 a barrel in London on Friday, before paring gains to $49.38 at 10:37 a.m. local time. West Texas Intermediate rallied as much as 3.1 percent.

The price increase following the death of King Abdullah will be temporary because it won’t alter the nation’s policies and U.S. oil output will continue rising.

In signs of a smooth succession, Salman was named king and Prince Muqrin, 69, another half-brother, has been chosen as Crown Prince. Salman appointed Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the country’s Interior Minister, as deputy crown prince and his son Mohammed bin Salman as defense minister, Saudi State Television reported today.