debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
TARP – the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program that bailed out Wall Street in 2008 – is over. The Treasury Department announced it will be completing the sale of the remaining shares it owns of the banks and of General Motors. But in reality it’s not over. The biggest Wall Street banks are now far bigger than they were [...]
“Mapping Future Scenarios for the Euro-zone” is a valuable contribution to the debate among European policy makers, opinion formers and decision takers about the profound challenges facing the future of the Euro – and by extension – the European Union itself. It should also prove helpful to those in the media and in European civil [...]
Whether the eurozone is viable or not remains an open question. But what if a breakup can only be postponed, not avoided? If so, delaying the inevitable would merely make the endgame worse – much worse. Germany increasingly recognizes that if the adjustment needed to restore growth, competitiveness, and debt sustainability in the eurozone’s periphery [...]
Sanford Weill, the former Chairman and CEO of Citigroup, suggested on CNBC that banks should be broken up to separate retail from investment banking – a reform also widely proposed in Europe. This is a very significant move, as Robert Reich argued, given that Weill is widely credited as having developed the current Wall Street [...]
Increasingly, one hears predictions that the euro will go the way of the gold standard in the 1930’s. And, increasingly, the reasoning behind such forecasts seems persuasive. But does that mean that the euro doomsayers are right? Following the 1929 stock market crash, Europe was hit by a massive deflationary shock. Output collapsed and unemployment [...]
Great significance – probably too much – has been attached to a possible breakup of the eurozone. Many believe that such a breakup – if, say, Greece abandoned the euro and reintroduced the drachma – would constitute a political failure that would ultimately threaten Europe’s stability. Speaking before the Bundestag last October, German Chancellor Angela [...]
Angela Merkel has made her choice: “I support Nicolas Sarkozy on all fronts,” she told reporters in Paris. This is not surprising. It is “perfectly natural” to support fellow conservatives, she explained. Yet, this alliance is dressed in historic terms: “It’s about the big responsibility we have, the construction of Europe. We are surrounded by [...]
The eurozone crisis seems to be reaching its climax, with Greece on the verge of default and an inglorious exit from the monetary union, and now Italy on the verge of losing market access. But the eurozone’s problems are much deeper. They are structural, and they severely affect at least four other economies: Ireland, Portugal, [...]
The European Union, and the Eurozone in particular, has impressive institutional achievements to its name. We have a European Parliament, European Commission, European Court of Justice, a set of common regulations that exceeded 100,000 last time I checked (acquis communautaire), and of course the European Central Bank. These institutions are meant to underpin its unified [...]
This is an interesting interview with Yanis Varoufakis and I agree with most of it, although the Greek plight is clearly more due to fiscal irresponsibility than a banking crisis (and vice versa in other cases such as Ireland). But his suggested solutions are pretty much where we need to go and he is absolutely right that a breakup [...]
For the ones who haven’t noticed yet: Germany is the key country in resolving the Eurozone crisis. And she is not doing much to resolve it. Here is an interesting debate including Jeffrey Sachs on MSNBC: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
I am having my last day of holiday in the sun of Cuba and I am shocked to see how the Eurozone crisis has worsened again (it was of course never resolved). This time it might well be game over. Not only is it almost impossible to see how Greece could escape the debt spiral [...]
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