The following is about the Ukraine, hardly a model of transparency, accountability and democracy. But it is interesting for what it tell us about the thinking of the great imperial powers (GIPs). On the one hand today’s GIPs make a great to-do about the need for democracy, often insisting that it is a condition for [...]
Posts under ‘Macroeconomics’
Are we in a household debt crisis?
Feb 16th, 2012 by Carl Packman.During the middle of last year, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein noted that rather than beating around the bush, he would call “what we’re in [now, in the US] a “household-debt crisis,” or something more elegant that gets the same idea across”. The reason being that household debt to GDP ratio are dangerously high, banks aren’t [...]
Where the real division lies
Feb 16th, 2012 by Richard Leonard.Politics is a choice between left and right – tackling inequality, injustice and poverty and a redistribution of power on the one hand or relying on trickle-down and the free market on the other. And the goals of the wider movement of which my own union GMB is proudly part have always been international. We are [...]
The French goose and the Greek gander
Feb 15th, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.Inside the Eurozone, what’s good for the French democratic Goose it appears, is not necessarily applicable to the Greek democratic gander…. From the Financial Times of 13 February, 2012: Bookmarks Hide Sites
Unemployment shows we need alternatives to austerity
Feb 15th, 2012 by Cat Smith.Today marks the three year anniversary of unemployment breaking the 2 million mark, and figures out today show the 8th consecutive month of rising unemployment. Unemployment jumped by 48,000 in the quarter to December to 2.67 million, a jobless rate of 8.4%, the worst figure since the end of 1995. The Government’s austerity plan is [...]
Solidarity campaign to support the people of Greece
Feb 14th, 2012 by Newsdesk.The following appeal for solidarity was today made in a letter to the Guardian. It can be signed here. The people of Greece face an unprecedented economic and political crisis (Violence grips Athens, 13 February). They are being driven to poverty and mass unemployment by the demands of the so-called Troika. Hospitals in Greece are running [...]
Greece: the explosion of a revolution
Feb 9th, 2012 by David Osler.My next scheduled visit to Athens is only four months away, and I guess the city will still look pretty much the way it did last time I was there, its skyline dominated as ever by the Parthenon and the Acropolis. But in social and political terms, Greece is going to feel very different. Such [...]
As the cuts bite and growth stagnates, who will challenge our reckless bankers?
Feb 6th, 2012 by Ann Pettifor.The humiliation of Fred Goodwin may have appeased a public baying for vengeance, but has done little to fix the broken global banking system or reverse the Second Great Depression. But then the public have been given very little leadership as to how to address the causes of this crisis. Politicians, economists, central bankers and [...]
David Miliband’s right about a debate, but it can’t ignore the big issues
Feb 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.There is much to welcome in David Miliband’s call for a ‘comradely and serious debate’ about the future for the Labour Party, as prompted by Roy Hattersley’s recent article in the Political Quarterly on social democracy. He is certainly right about the spirit in which the debate should take place, but this initial foray will [...]
We’re all economists now (part three)
Feb 1st, 2012 by Ben Mitchell.Parts One and Two appeared earlier this week. Once in office, the coalition has decided to run roughshod over the economic reality. For the last 21 months or so they have pursued a series of tough austerity measures: aggressive cuts combined with huge reductions in public spending, believing that this is the only way to [...]
