debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Following the result of the first round of the French Presidential elections, it seems that – at last – a new wind is blowing in the European sky. The much sidestepped “growth agenda” is slowly gaining currency in the European political discourse and calls for pro-growth measures, for a European growth strategy and for a reconsideration of [...]
As the Supreme Court shows every sign of throwing out “Obamacare” and leaving 30 million Americans without health insurance, another drama is being played out in the quiet corridors of the Federal Reserve system that may affect even more of us. Taxpayers will be on the hook for another giant Wall Street bailout, and the [...]
Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs vice president, resigned his post Wednesday with a stinging public rebuke of the firm on the oped page of the New York Times — accusing it of no longer putting its clients before its own pecuniary goals. But if Mr. Smith believes his experience at Goldman is something new, he doesn’t know history. In [...]
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the “critical risks” facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe’s chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices. What about jobs and wages here at [...]
Irish democracy may become Europe’s focus in 2012, if the Merkel-Sarkozy ‘stability and growth union’ proposals are put to a vote of the Irish people. Any change to the Constitution of Ireland requires a referendum. The Irish Attorney General will examine the final wording of the fiscal compact in March before advising whether these proposals [...]
Yet again historians, sociologists, cultural studies academics, and political scientists betray their academic duty. Previously they’ve shied away, in numbers far too big for comfort, from the problems of immigration, integration and Islam. They became traitors to their own expert knowledge on human society by failing to, in a timely and loud fashion, single out [...]
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the world discovered by Alice was one in which every aspect of reality was inverted. Big things were small. Small things grew big. The Cheshire cat faded into a grin. One side of a mushroom made you grow. The other made you shrink. It was also a world [...]
Mitt Romney is casting the 2012 campaign as “free enterprise on trial” – defining free enterprise as achieving success through “hard work and risking-taking.” Tea-Party favorite Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina says he’s supporting Romney because “we really need someone who understands how risk, taking risk … is the way we create jobs, create [...]
Despite years of official talk about addressing global current-account imbalances, they remained one of the world’s main economic concerns in 2011. Global imbalances were, to be sure, smaller overall than before the crisis, but they did not disappear. Now some are increasing again, alongside inequality in many countries. That link is no accident. One often [...]
The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but [...]
Wherever progressives hit the streets in protest, a repeated (literally) slogan is, “we are the 99 percent”, confronting the one percent with its crimes of greed. The percentage reference is usually to annual income, and, less often but of equal if not more relevance, to wealth. How rich do you have to be to be [...]
The economic and financial crisis has laid bare the weaknesses of the dominant growth model in no uncertain terms. Manifestly, this growth, which was largely abandoned to market forces, was not sustainable. This is shown as well by the crisis in the European Monetary Union. Now, a taskforce of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung presents a roadmap for [...]
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