Geography Archives: Greece

It is obviously silly to push for austerity in the midst of a recession, not just silly but cruel, since it prolongs the pain of unemployment.  The recession is caused by a deficiency of aggregate demand.  To overcome it what is necessary is an increase in demand which requires larger expenditure.  Since private expenditure on […]

Last week, Democratic Governors in New York and Connecticut repeated the austerity politics of Greece’s Prime Minister Papandreou and Portugal’s Socrates.  In doing so, they likewise imitated the austerity politics of their Republican and Democratic counterparts across virtually all 50 states.  Austerity for labor and the public is everywhere capitalism’s Plan B.  After all, even […]

The prevailing understanding of economic troubles in the U.S. and Europe, the world’s two largest economies, is mistaken in a number of ways.  First: Imagine that you are driving a car down a road packed with snow and ice and you are worried about an accident.  At the same time you are ignoring the fact […]

Time to beat up on really, really bad news reporting.  The stock market doesn’t tell people why it does what it does.  We have commentators who bloviate on what they think caused the market to rise or fall, but they don’t really know and they could be completely wrong. That is why it was incredibly […]

The President, Senators, Congresspersons, media representatives, and many ordinary people speak often, these days, about Washington “learning to live within our means.”  Last Friday, the private rating company, Standard and Poor’s (S&P), said the riskiness of lending to the US had risen because the US was not living within its means (i.e. borrowing too much).  […]

All money managers’ eyes were on the U.S. jobs report this morning after the U.S. stock market yesterday suffered its biggest drop since 2009 and panic surged through financial markets worldwide.  The headline numbers were not as bad as many had feared: the U.S. economy added 117,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate edged […]

  The Republicans have successfully changed the main emphasis of the economic debate from job creation to deficit control.  Why the urgency for balanced budgets?  After all, this anemic “recovery” has set itself apart from all previous post-war turnarounds precisely by its manifest failure to generate jobs.  Economic growth needs to considerably exceed 3% per […]

As the eurozone authorities move closer to accepting the inevitable Greek debt default/restructuring, there are some who have pointed to the Jamaican debt restructuring of last year as a model.  It’s hard to imagine a worse disaster for Greece.  It is worth a closer look at what has been done to Jamaica, not only as […]

Throughout its history, capitalism never succeeded in preventing recurring economic cycles or crises.  However, they were usually contained within the system.  Economic crises usually did not become social crises; the system itself was usually not called into question.  Transition to a different system was then an idea kept away from public discussion, a project kept […]

Eneko Las Heras, born in Caracas in 1963, is a cartoonist based in Spain.  The cartoon above was first published on his blog . . . Y sin embargo se mueve on 29 June 2011. | Print

Political sensitivity and thoughtfulness, depth of knowledge and analysis, deep commitment and kindness are, in my view, a perfect combination to build a movement for justice and to create meaningful change.  These were the characteristics that so moved and inspired me these past couple of weeks as I spent time in Athens with two of […]

The Euro is crashing today to record lows against the Swiss Franc, and interest rates on Italian and Spanish bonds have hit record highs.  This latest episode in the Eurozone crisis is a result of fears that the contagion is now hitting Italy.  With a two-trillion dollar economy and $2.45 trillion in debt, Italy is […]

“@USBOATTOGAZA  Iceland Parliamentarian visits boat to show solidarity.  ‘Greece sold its economy to western banks and its politics to Israel.’” — Medea Benjamin, 2 July 2011 Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Fulya Özerkan, “Gov’t Pressure on İHH Divides Group before Flotilla Decision” (Hürriyet Daily News, 16 June 2011); Semih İdiz, “Why the Mavi […]

  Much of the discussion surrounding the Greek crisis revolves around the probability and implications of a sovereign default and on whether the introduction of a national currency (which, for simplicity, we could call the new drachma) would help pull the Greek economy out of recession (see for example Manasse 2011 on this site).  Less […]

  After a two-hour standoff at sea, the U.S. Boat to Gaza The Audacity of Hope was seized by the Greek Coast Guard and forced to return to the port of Piraeus under military escort.  The boat’s captain has been put in jail, charged with disturbing sea traffic — which includes endangering the lives of […]

  The Irish-owned ship, the MV Saoirse, that was meant to take part in Freedom Flotilla 2 has been sabotaged in a dangerous manner in the Turkish coastal town of Göcek, where it had been at berth for the past few weeks.  Visual evidence of the undership sabotage, which was carried out by divers, will […]

“The Peoples Have the Power and Never Surrender.  Organize, Counterattack!” was the slogan written in Greek and in English on the banner that the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) hung from the Acropolis on 27 June, on the eve of the 48-hour strike against the barbaric anti-people measures of the social-democratic government, the EU, and […]

  Default is not the dirty word that nobody wants to say.  Almost everybody now accepts that Greece will default.  Several people will prefer to use the euphemism of “re-profiling debts,” but we all know what it means.  The interesting thing is that at least some authors, like Martin Wolf in a recent Financial Times […]

The European authorities are playing a dangerous game of “chicken” with Greece right now.  It is overdue for U.S. members of Congress to exercise some oversight as to what our government’s role is in this process, and how we might be preparing for a Greek debt default.  Depending on how it happens, this default could […]

  In March 2011, a group of people from different political backgrounds took the initiative to demand the formation of an Audit Committee in Greece.  Academics, writers, artists, union representatives all over the world supported this initiative.  The Audit Committee will find which parts of the debt are odious or illegitimate and will prove that, […]