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“SYRIZA Is Acting Responsibly”: Interview with Yanis Varoufakis
The German taxpayers should be happy to have SYRIZA in Greece, says economist Yanis Varoufakis in an interview. Greece is not unwilling to reform.
ZEIT ONLINE: Mr. Varoufakis, the Greeks say they want to keep the euro but vote for SYRIZA and its leader Alexis Tsipras, whose plan could lead to an exit from the monetary union. How does that work?
Yanis Varoufakis: SYRIZA also wants Greece to remain in the eurozone. But, at the same time, it wants to renegotiate the austerity program, because it doesn’t work. Just about everyone who knows anything about economics knows that by now.
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Greece at a Crossroads: Crisis and Radicalization in the Southern European Semi-periphery
Introduction The Greek crisis represents the deepening of a long systemic contradiction whose origins lie in the 1960s, in the stagnation of monopoly capitalism and the emergence of the South. The industrial centers of the world economy were struck by a crisis of profitability, which was displaced outward in space and forward in time by […]
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Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
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“Fail Again and Fail Better”: Matan Kaminer on J14 Protests in Israel
I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]
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“It’s Time to Invent”: Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]
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Wall Street, Small Business, and the Limits of Corporate Personhood: An Interview with Doug Henwood
Sasha Lilley: Protests against Wall Street have inspired many people to move their money from big banks to smaller banks and credit unions and encourage others to do the same. Why might you be skeptical of this effort? Doug Henwood: There are several reasons. First of all, I think a lot of the big banks […]
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Is United States Government a Paper Tiger?
In a 1956 interview with Anna Louise Strong, Mao described American imperialism as a paper tiger. Of course, the military strength of the United States is unparalleled, especially because this country accounts for about half of worldwide military spending. Even so, the last three significant wars have shown that the country has been unable to […]
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Shale Gas and Climate Change — A Burning Issue
On November 6th, thousands of protesters staged a colorful encirclement of the White House in Washington D.C., protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline project and against expansion in extraction of tar sands oil. Within just four days after this bold direct action, Obama ordered a thorough review of the pipeline plan and suspended decision-making on […]
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Occupy Your Education: A Note to Students about Changing the World
The current Occupy Movement has captured people’s imagination and refocused the national discussion on issues of economic injustice, social stratification, and corruptions of American democracy. Contrary to what some people might think, the Occupy Movement is not composed solely of “young, idealistic college kids.” People of many different ages, ethnicities, and ideological persuasions are […]
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The Occupy Wall Street Uprising and the U.S. Labor Movement: An Interview with Steve Early, Jon Flanders, Stephanie Luce, and Jim Straub
The Occupy Wall Street uprising has taken the nation by storm, beginning in the Financial District in Manhattan and then spreading to cities and towns in every part of the country and around the world. The anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for […]
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Occupy Wall Street: An Opening to Worker-Occupation of Factories and Enterprises in the U.S.
The Social Economy Context The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has clearly expressed the hopes and great potentialities of the working class both in the U.S. and globally. The 99 percent are speaking up and saying that they will no longer do the bidding of the 1 percent. In essence it is the revolt […]
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Prison vs. Princeton
It costs the state of New Jersey more money to hold a prisoner for one year than to fund one Princeton student’s tuition. Here’s an overview of the disturbing trend of prioritizing prison over higher education in the US. PublicAdministration.Net was created as an online informational resource for individuals looking to pursue public administration-related […]
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The Vampire Squid Turns to Education
In his Republic, Plato analogized elites to guard dogs who must be educated as to whom they must guard against and whom they must protect. One of Plato’s nightmare scenarios was a ruling class that lost the ability to make this distinction and turned wholly predatory on its sustaining population. Enter our present-day banking […]
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KAFCA (Knowledge Against Financial Capitalism) No. 02: #15O
The Knowledge Liberation Front proposes bankruptcy and basic income as “knowledge against financial capitalism.” But does this proposal not actually serve as knowledge for financial capitalism: i.e., Bankruptcy + Basic Income = Social Democracy under the Neoliberal Regime of Accumulation? An example of how the Left, not the Right, innovates capitalism? — Ed. See, also, […]
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The Manufactured “Financial Crisis” of the U.S. Postal Service
September 21, 2011 Senator Joseph Lieberman Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee United States Senate SH-706 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-0703 Congressman Darrell Issa Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee House of Representatives 2347 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-0549 If the U.S. Postal Service were forced […]
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Brazil’s “Independent” Central Bank: Independent from Whom?
In recent days the press has reported that President Dilma Rouseff has denied having tried to influence the Brazilian central bank to lower short-term interest rates, as the bank did on August 31 from 12.5 to 12.0 percent. The fact that she would feel obligated to make such a statement shows that there is a […]
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Brazil’s “Wall Street” Problem
Brazil’s economy is slowing, but the government is increasing its primary surplus by cutting spending, which could slow the economy more. In June, industrial production fell by 1.6 percent, and economic activity fell for the first time since 2008. Although monthly figures are erratic and don’t necessarily indicate any trend, the overall picture raises questions […]
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A First Ever Default? Closing the Gold Window, Forty Years On
During the recent “Debt Ceiling” debacle, many warned that the failure to lift the debt ceiling would lead to a “first ever” US default and to numerous financial catastrophes, including the demise of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. “First Ever Default?” Think again. Forty years ago this month, on August 15, 1971, […]
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Venezuela and Iran to Raise Levels of Coordination at OPEC in View of Financial Crisis
Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, communicated by telephone with the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the afternoon of the 15th of August, 2011. President Ahmadinejad said to President Chávez that, in this sacred month of Ramadan, he and millions of Iranians are praying […]
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Unraveling the Unemployment Insurance Lifeline: Responding to Insolvency, States Begin Reducing Benefits and Restricting Eligibility in 2011
Excerpt: State lawmakers enacted a range of policies in 2011 to amend their unemployment insurance (UI) programs, most of them motivated by insolvent state trust funds. Most notably, six states passed unprecedented cuts in the duration of benefits, for the first time reducing benefit weeks to less than the decades-long accepted standard of 26 […]