debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
George Irvin and Andrew Watt have already pointed out the folly of the debt brake for Europe in general and Spain in particular. We shall see if Spain’s proposal to limit its structural deficit to 0,4% GDP will hold up until 2020 (when it is supposed to take effect). We shall see if the Spanish [...]
At the AGM on Monday the Swedish Labour Movement Think Tank (Arbetarrörelsens tankesmedja) elected a completely new board. The board is now composed solely of women. Kerstin Alnebratt who has a PhD in Gender Studies and is director of the Swedish National Secretariat for Gender Research at the University of Gothenburg was elected president. Between 1994-2002 she [...]
To see why the renewed rise in unemployment in the euro area, by 150,000 in the last three months, is so worrying, it is useful to look at the experience of the last two major downturns and the subsequent recoveries – or failed recoveries. The chart shows the level of unemployment in the euro area [...]
The ECB raised interest rates on 13 April and again on 13 July. That that was a mistake was evident at the time (here and here). We have since seen how the predicted worsening of the situation for peripheral countries has indeed come to pass. As of today we have 150,000 more reasons to protest [...]
In the report under the title “Pas de rentrée pur les ‘Ni-Nis’”, Le Monde tells the story of 17-years old Yetzel Decerra living with his parents in the North of Mexico and one of the activists of the “Movement of the Excluded from Higher Education”, founded in 2006. “No place for me in public education, [...]
Instead of writing about needing a plan C (where C = catastrophe), I am going on holiday until the third week of September, but this excellent piece by Wolfgang Münchau (FT 28 Aug 2011, ‘Even a joint bond might not save the euro’; http://on.ft.com/q5W1dH) admirably sums up the situation in the Euro Area. I would [...]
The indefatigable Dean Baker, one of America’s most stimulating economic commentators, has a new e-book out, entitled The end of loser liberalism: making markets progressive. It can be downloaded for free as a pdf here. It is written primarily for an American audience: the ‘liberalism’ of the title refers to what Europeans would call ‘the [...]
The violence witnessed ten years ago was spectacularly horrifying. Mass death quite literally broadcast “live”. Many images of that fateful day still linger. We still recoil at the moment the second plane impacted, the point at which we knew this was no accident. Our memories can still recall that frozen transience, the same experienced shared [...]
One is tempted to say: social inventions or re-inventions (as the newly invented/discovered possibility of restoring to the city square the ancient role of the agora on which rules and rulers were made and unmade) tend to spread “as forest fire”. One would say that, if not for the fact that globalization has finally invalidated [...]
On Saturday The National Federation of Social Democratic Women in Sweden (S-kvinnor) elected Lena Sommestad as its new president. Sommestad was proposed by a unanimous nominating committee earlier this summer and won against the sitting president Nalin Pekul with 64 votes against 34 at the biannual conference in Luleå in northern Sweden. Lena Sommestad became known [...]
Joseph Stiglitz gave this interesting talk at a meeting of economics Nobel Laureates in Lindau:
A few days ago I wrote about an opinion poll in Denmark. Now Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has announced that parliamentary elections will be held on September 15th. That is only three days after the Norwegian voters go to the ballot boxes in the local elections. These are two important dates if you want [...]
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