debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Has the Eurozone crisis undermined Europe’s place in the world? In an interview with EUROPP’s editors Stuart A Brown and Chris Gilson, Saskia Sassen discusses the role of finance in the crisis, the threat posed by transnational systems of surveillance, and the potential for public disorder to give a political voice to the powerless. In your view, [...]
The world has seen a hundred financial crises in the past three decades. In this column, Nobelist Joe Stiglitz argues that we could have done much more to prevent this crisis and to mitigate its effects. Looking ahead, we can do much more to prevent the next one. This is a chance to revolutionise flawed [...]
Since the second half of 2012, financial markets have recovered strongly worldwide. Indeed, in the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average reached an all-time high in early March, having risen by close to 9% since September. In Europe, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s “guns of August” turned out to be remarkably effective. Draghi reversed the [...]
Eighty years ago this month, Ferdinand Pecora, the cigar-chomping former assistant district attorney for New York City, was appointed chief counsel for the US Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. In subsequent months, the hearings of the Pecora Commission featured many sensational revelations about the practices that led to the 1930’s financial crisis. More than [...]
It’s official. The International Monetary Fund has put its stamp of approval on capital controls, thereby legitimizing the use of taxes and other restrictions on cross-border financial flows. Not long ago, the IMF pushed hard for countries – rich or poor – to open up to foreign finance. Now it has acknowledged the reality that financial globalization [...]
Why do neoclassical economists want the budget to be balanced and people to save more? Because they believe that “saving finances investment”. They believe that in order to finance investment, somebody has to have saved beforehand. This might sound intuitive, but it is one of the biggest (and unfortunately oldest) fallacies in economics. Saving never [...]
In an exasperated outburst, just before he left the presidency of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet complained that, “as a policymaker during the crisis, I found the available [economic and financial] models of limited help. In fact, I would go further: in the face of the crisis, we felt abandoned by conventional tools.” Trichet [...]
The negotiations between EU member states on the introduction of a financial transaction tax have so far been fruitless. The basis for negotiation is a European Commission proposal that Carsten Sieling, a member of the Bundestag Finance Committee, presented and analysed for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. In his view, the causes of the financial, economic and Eurozone [...]
Everyone is telling us that growth is the only way out of the debt and fiscal crisis. But the one thing on which the so-called experts cannot agree is where this growth is supposed to come from. Growth rates in the affluent industrial nations have been in more or less steady decline since the 1970s; [...]
At this time of year, at graduation ceremonies in America and elsewhere, those about to leave university often hear some final words of advice before receiving their diplomas. To those interested in pursuing careers in finance – or related careers in insurance, accounting, auditing, law, or corporate management – I submit the following address: Best [...]
In commenting on the crisis I have largely steered clear of more detailed debates on re-regulating the financial sector. It’s a crucial area, but one in which I lack expertise. One commentator who has followed these debates closely and I find informative is Bruegel’s Nicolas Veron. (I also recommend the new initiative Finance Watch.) Nicolas’s [...]
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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