Analysis: Ukraine's $13.4 billion soccer spend might become debt burden

KIEV (Reuters) - Ukraine may never recover all of the billions of dollars it has spent to co-host next month's European soccer championship and the outlay might complicate its chances of servicing its debt.

EZRA KLEIN echoes a line of thinking that's increasingly common:

MONTREAL – When Mukhbir Singh’s soccer team won the league championship this past winter, he was on the sidelines – barred from the pitch last November because he wears a turban. Singh, a 25-year-old Montrealer, has been coaching instead of playing for his recreational league team ever since. “My teammates are very supportive and wanted me to be a part of the team anyway,” he said. Singh will have to wait at least a little while longer to get back on the field.

Ukraine complained on Wednesday that it had received little or no support from European countries in its face-off with Russia over the price of its gas imports and a $7 billion Russian bill. The dispute dramatically escalated last month when Russia's gas giant Gazprom sent the bill to Kiev to cover gas it says Ukraine was under contract to buy last year, but never took. Though Ukraine's ties with the European Union are equally strained, President Viktor Yanukovich indicated on ...

An outtake from the in-progress DeLong and Summers, "Fiscal Policy in a Low-Interest Rate Environment". This digression has no proper place in the paper, so I am posting it here...

The Pentagon’s internal auditing arm charged with ensuring that DOD spends its money properly has a $574 billion backlog – leaving potentially tens of billions of overpayments to contractors on the table.