Geography Archives: Europe

When a firefighter or medical team make a rescue, the person is usually better off as a result.  This is less clear when the rescuer is the European Central Bank (ECB) or the IMF. Ireland is currently experiencing a 14.1 percent unemployment rate.  As a result of bailout conditions that will require more cuts in […]

  Table 14 summarizes the main technical characteristics of the debt restructurings studied in this paper: the size of the exchange, the participation rate, the numbers of instruments tendered and new instruments issued, the options available to investors, etc.  Table 15 contains the main results, both in terms of the level and dispersion of NPV […]

Acclaimed philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He shared his perspectives on international affairs, economics, and other themes in an interview conducted at his office in Boston on September 14, 2010. Keane Bhatt: Your new book Hopes and Prospects begins with the story of […]

For the banks For the Irish Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 19 November 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | Print

  In 2009, the European Union, United States and Mexico filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China’s export restrictions on certain raw materials, including bauxite, coke, fluorspar, silicon carbide and zinc.  They said that, firstly, these constraints — in the form of export taxes, quotas, licences and so on — caused […]

  . . . The travails of the lands of Ire and Ice are not so much at odds with each other and come down essentially to the same point — the size of banking assets to that of the general economy; but they do differ considerably in how the two economies approached the battle. […]

Poblacht na h Éireann™ The Temporary Government To the people of Anglo-Ireland™ IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of Mammon and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of subservience, we declare the name of this country to be Anglo-Ireland™, and through us, Anglo-Ireland™ summons her children to aid her banks […]

  The capitalist media say that there is no alternative to the thrust of the economic policies being advanced by the government, the EU and the IMF.  This is completely untrue.  There is an alternative — a socialist alternative. Shut Down Anglo Irish Bank The bailout of Anglo Irish Bank is set to cost the […]

  Oscar Martínez is Deputy Head of the International Relations Department of the Cuban Communist Party.  This interview was conducted during the South African Communist Party visit to Cuba this month. What is the nature of the economic problems Cuba is currently experiencing? In the context of our other problems, the US economic and financial […]

As another one of the so-called “PIIGS” countries is being led to the slaughterhouse, it is worth asking whether all the carnage advocated by the European authorities is really necessary.  Ireland is in its third year of recession and income per person has already declined by more than 20 percent since 2007.  Unemployment has more […]

  Paul Jay: On November 7, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, issued a statement calling for the reintroduction of some form of gold standard to establish the value of money.  Why now? . . .  Is Robert Zoellick’s proposal grasping at straws? Jane D’Arista: Well, what you’re saying is quite right.  The […]

Have governments everywhere simply lost their marbles?  Not much emerged from the Seoul G-20 Summit — and definitely not anything really desirable in the form of coordinated Global Keynesian policies (of the kind that Matías Vernengo has advocated in the TripleCrisis blog).  But then, quite frankly, not much was really expected to come out, given […]

Part 1 Part 2 Part 1 Tom Corbett, Governor-Elect for Pennsylvania: It’s now time to come together, to tell the rest of the world — to tell the rest of the world Pennsylvania is open for business. Jesse Freeston: And that business is natural gas.  Pennsylvania’s race was unique in that it was fought primarily […]

If the G-20 is going to be nothing more than a talking shop on economic issues, they ought to at least talk about the economic problems that really matter, and the ones that they can do something about.  Not that currency values don’t matter — they are actually very important.  And it is interesting to […]

Tony Karon has another sharp piece this week, entitled “Israel Pressed for a Tougher U.S. Line on Iran.”  For some time now, we have been forecasting an intensification of pressure on the Obama Administration, by Israel and pro-Israel constituencies in the United States, for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It appears that the […]

Using ropes, some young people descended halfway from railroad bridges to force the train to stop.  Others hastily grabbed stones out from under the tracks and in this way prevent their use.  Far more, young and old from all over Germany, simply sat down on the tracks until police carried them away.  Banners and witty, […]

I ran as an independent candidate for Congress in Massachusetts against a visibly tired and increasingly unpopular but entrenched liberal Democratic incumbent, and a Tea Party Republican.  My message was, “The old system is broken — let’s start building a new one!”  I stated that I wanted to fight what I described as the trend […]

The Tea Party: The Atavistic Wing of the Republican Party Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  This cartoon was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 5 November 2010. | Print

It is now abundantly clear that each and every response by the eurozone (EZ) to the galloping sovereign debt crisis has been consistently underwhelming.  This includes the joint EZ-IMF operation, back in May, to “rescue” Greece and, in short order, the quite remarkable overnight formation of a so-called “special vehicle” (officially the European Financial Stability […]

The San Jose Mine incident in Chile has brought back old questions about labor and capital.  About those questions, raised by the 33 miners’ struggle to survive, I interviewed Michael D. Yates, Associate Editor of Monthly Review.  Yates was for many years professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, USA.  He is […]