Geography Archives: Greece

  • The Merkel Model Spreads to Japan

    The European public debt crisis, artificially created by the puritan obtuseness of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has spread to even Japan.  In fact, Naoto Kan, the new prime minister, mentioned Greece in a speech in which he claimed to fear the collapse of the Japanese economy under a heavy public debt equal to 230 percent […]

  • Greek Debt: Default or Restructuring?

    After Greece, what?  Hungary?  Or a low growth prospect for Europe?  Or disappointment with American recovery?  Or, still Greece?  The international financial markets are always nervous and unstable — sometimes sad, sometimes euphoric, but always in a dialectic of rationality and irrationality.  Despite our more “scientific” air, we economists make the same mistakes.  So, perplexed […]

  • Exploiting “Crisis” to Crush Labor

    One thing should be made clear about the situation in the Eurozone economies that is not clear at all if we rely on most of the news reports.  This is not a situation where countries face a “dilemma” because they have overspent and piled up too much public debt.  They do not face “tough choices” […]

  • Eurozone Crisis: Beggar Thyself and Thy Neighbour

    Excerpt: The mechanisms of crisis Gains for German capital, losses for German workers and periphery i. Monetary union has imposed fiscal rigidity, removed monetary independence, and forced economic adjustment through the labour market.  Workers have lost share of output relative to capital in Germany and peripheral countries. ii. The German economy has performed poorly, with […]

  • G20: Where No Side Wins

    There is only one message that comes out of Toronto, where the G20 summit has come to an end.  The formation, ostensibly created to reflect changing power equations in the world economy, serves no purpose.  It has turned out to be one more talking shop in which agreement to disagree is presented as a consensus. […]

  • Capitalism’s Self-Destructive Spontaneity

    Under the Gold Standard the values of different currencies were fixed in terms of gold, which meant that the exchange rates between those currencies were fixed.  Exchange rate movements therefore could not be used to enlarge net exports and hence domestic employment.  At the same time governments were committed to the principle of “sound finance”, […]

  • United against Us, Divided among Themselves: Toronto and European Assault on Living Standards

      Martin Wolf described it as “a bloodbath.”  The Financial Times editorial called it a “chilling read.”  Britain’s budget is one of austerity, the likes of which has not been seen in generations.  A 25 per cent cut in public spending; a quarter of a million or more public sector jobs to be slashed.  It […]

  • You Can’t Eat a Collateralized Debt Obligation: Why Money Doesn’t Make the World Go Round

    The global financial crisis that began in 2007 was clearly about money, credit, and finance.  For mainstream economists and politicians — from neoliberals like John B. Taylor at Stanford and Tony Abbott, through pragmatists like Barack Obama and Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, to Keynesians and social democrats like Paul Krugman at Princeton and John […]

  • From a Stalemate on the Rhine to a Quagmire in Berlin

    Things are really happening in Germany!  Like many others, I predicted that the federal government, an unhappy coalition of right-wing Christian Democrats led by Angela Merkel and her even more big-biz-friendly junior partners, the FDP (Free Democrats), would wait for a key election in the giant state of North-Rhine Westphalia on May 9th and then […]

  • Greece: Explosive Debt

      A time bomb of interests on the debt, threatening to explode the edifice of Greek economy propped up by an IMF package. Gervasio Umpiérrez is a cartoonist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.  This cartoon was featured on the home page of Rebelión on 16 June 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | […]

  • Managing the Euro: Mission Impossible!

    1.  No state, no money.  Together, a state and its currency constitute, under capitalism, the means to manage the general interest of capital, transcending the particular interests of competing segments of capital.  The current dogma that imagines a capitalist system managed by the “market,” i.e. without the state (reduced to its minimal functions of ensuring […]

  • Don’t Let Deficit Demagogues Scare You into Accepting Austerity

    The U.S. and European Union together make up about half of the global economy, and recovery is quite uncertain in both of these big economies.  Contrary to a lot of folk wisdom and political posturing, the problem is not irresponsible government spending in either case, but a lack of commitment by the authorities in both […]

  • Fun with Money

    The deficit hawks have been working themselves into a frenzy in recent weeks over the prospect that the country will come out of the recession with a huge debt.  They have convinced much of the policy elite (admittedly, a very gullible crew) that the United States is on the edge of becoming Greece, unable to […]

  • Economic Crisis, Greek Theater, Our Drama

    Political theater now grips Greece.  As with ancient Greek plays, today’s drama also reaches and touches everyone else.  We sense Greece’s dilemmas becoming our own. Her rulers declare that a crisis now threatens Greece.  They blame it on the masses.  To overcome it, they must impose great suffering on the masses.  The rulers’ chorus intones […]

  • Israel Attacks Turkish Free Gaza Ship: 16 Killed, According to Israeli Army Radio

    30 May 2010 — According to Turkish news sources (CNN Turk, Hürriyet, Milliyet, NTV, and many others), Israeli soldiers stormed the Turkish Free Gaza ship Mavi Marmara belonging to İnsani Yardım Vakfı (Humanitarian Aid Foundation), killing at least 2 and wounding over 30 on board.  The Turkish government has set up a crisis room while […]

  • No Justice, No Euro!

    The current turmoil in financial markets around the world is another illustration of the damage that can be done by a bloated and politically powerful financial sector, combined with finance ministers and central bankers who identify with this sector and have their own right-wing policy agenda. Welcome to Europe, which has become the epicenter of […]

  • Revisiting Global Imbalances

    Until recently, the discussion on global imbalances focused on the current account deficit of the US and the current account surplus of China, making this a bilateral rather than a multilateral problem.  As a result, the process of rebalancing was seen as involving adjustments in either or both of these countries, and not so much […]

  • Greece: The Weak Link

      Esquerda.net: In December 2008, Greece faced huge demonstrations triggered by the killing of a youth by police.  What is the link between the reactions in 2008 and those seen in 2010? Stathis Kouvélakis: . . . They do share in common two important things.  The first is that they reflect, express, the deep crisis […]

  • Greece on Strike, 20 May 2010

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  • Greece under Occupation Again

    The Nazis in 1941, the EU and the IMF in 2010 Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  This cartoon was originally produced for Dromos. | Print