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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

To people who visit the idyllic tourist destination of the Maldives, politics can seem far away. But this week, the country's President Mohamed Nasheed stepped down after weeks of demonstrations. He was forced to resign by elements within the police and army. Here's how he described the situation to Al Jazeera.

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PRESIDENT MOHAMED NASHEED: This is a coup. It definitely is, if you find any definition of a coup anywhere. I did not want to defend. That is why there was no blood.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with social networking profits.

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INSKEEP: You can get attention on the Internet. You can even draw a massive crowd in seconds. The question always is how to make money. Investors have been scrutinizing Facebook's plans to go public and trying to figure out the company's prospects.

President Obama will unveil his budget for the next fiscal year on Monday. To find out more about the budget proposal, Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel, economics editor at The Wall Street Journal.

The multi-billion dollar bank mortgage settlement could have some unanticipated consequences for borrowers in trouble. There will likely be an initial surge of foreclosures. Banks, freed from uncertainty over the investigation, will probably pick up the pace of home seizures. But the foreclosure rate will probably fall over the longer term as banks ease the burden on borrowers through principal reductions.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Overall economic numbers for this year have been looking better, but almost every forecast for 2012 has included at least a mention that catastrophe could still come from Europe. The crisis over Greece's debt is not over, even after yesterday when lawmakers approved more budget cuts and economic reforms. Now Greek unions are protesting again.

Resolving this crisis has taken years, and there's a reason: a debt crisis has never really been solved this way before. Here's Zoe Chace of NPR's Planet Money team.