Greece approves austerity budget: ‘Hope has fallen away’

In Greece this weekend, the parliament adopted its third austerity budget, which will — if things go as planned — free up the latest slice of European Union bailout money.

Thrasy Petropoulos, managing editor of the Athens News, spoke about how the Greeks were taking the news. “The mood is not good; it hasn’t been good for such a long time,” he says. “Hope has long ago fallen away as the victim of ‘what’s the expectation, really?'”

Petropoulos says with such high unemployment rates across the country, many Greeks argue they’re sacrificing too much to be a part of the European Union.

He adds that while the U.S.’s own financial crisis — namely, the fiscal cliff — remains important news in Europe, “the more this goes on, the less people have — [and so] the less relevant [foreign news] becomes.”