debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
I have been involved in European economic policy debates for, well, longer than I care to remember. Whatever the disagreements I always made a point of crediting my interlocutors with good (or at least not seriously malign) intentions and made a serious effort to understand people’s arguments even when, indeed especially when, I disagreed with [...]
Paul Krugman recently shared a graphic from Eurostat that shows just how bad the employment situation is in Europe on the whole. Of course, the situation is much worse on the periphery. The graph below shows the evolution of employment in the PIGS in general and Spain and Greece in specific during the same timeframe. If we zoom out [...]
The Commission is still letting surplus countries off the hook. From the moment European Economic Governance was launched, it was denounced by trade unions as being an unbalanced system. The Commission was letting surplus countries such as Germany off the hook while putting the entire burden of adjustment on workers in the ‘deficit’ countries (see [...]
Concern has frequently been expressed that the deep and ongoing economic crisis in Europe, especially in the so-called periphery, could lead to a rise of political extremism. Reference is often made to the inter-war experience of Germany where the mass unemployment created by the Great Depression and the inability of democratic parties to deal with [...]
Did you think that the policy of fighting recession by increasing austerity was now intellectually bankrupt? No one seems to have told the Dutch central bank. (Hence the deliberately provocative title of this post.) The latest forecast by the Bank says: The economy will shrink by 0.8% this year, followed by growth of 0.5% next, ‘accelerating’ [...]
A few hours ago, the Greek government announced that state television and radio channels would be silenced at midnight. No public debate, no debate in Parliament, no warning. Nothing. ERT, the Greek version of the BBC, will simply fold its tent and steal into the night. As probably the only Greek commentator to have been [...]
As so often we have to look to foreign papers to understand what is happening in Britain. In a lengthy Q+A interview in Die Welt published last month (18 May), the Europe Minister, David Lidington sets out the UK government’s position on Europe. Like the Prime Minister in his speech in January he insists the [...]
The most stupefying defence of austerity is that it is not being practised. And if it is not being practised, how can one claim that it failed? Austerians point to high deficits in Britain, in Spain etc. as evidence that, indeed, austerity was in the eye of the beholder rather than practised policy. I can [...]
I am struck by the frequency with which the media are uncritically giving space to employers groups complaining about a supposed lack of skills. In Germany the idea does not seem completely absurd. Unemployment is at 5.5%, but there is considerable regional variation. Moreover, the German population is set to decline in the coming years. [...]
In 1911, famous Czech writer and satirist Jaroslav Hasek, assisted by his buds from Czech bohème, established the Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law. Its election headquarters were located in the pub “At the golden litre” in Vinohrady, part of Prague. Few days ago German Chancellor revealed her plans for a [...]
As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement [...]
The G20 Leaders Declaration at the Toronto Summit (June 2010) endorsed an ambitious agenda of ‘structural reforms’ cutting across both labour and product markets that would lift global output significantly, create ‘tens millions more jobs’, sustain poverty reduction and reduce global imbalances significantly.[1] The latest (18-19 April, 2013) Communique of Finance Ministers and Central Bank [...]
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