debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
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 [...]
The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos has lost some of its pre-crisis panache. After all, before the meltdown in 2008, the captains of finance and industry could trumpet the virtues of globalization, technology, and financial liberalization, which supposedly heralded a new era of relentless growth. The benefits would be shared by all, if [...]
There has been a surge of scholarly work on estimating fiscal multipliers and assessing their implications in the wake of the global financial and economic crises of 2007-2009. A large number of countries enacted fiscal stimulus packages in response to the twin crises, but an evaluation of their efficacy remains mired in controversy. Such controversy [...]
In a joint report [1] to the G20 Labour ministers meeting in June 2012 the IMF, OECD and World Bank together with the ILO managed to produce some remarkably ambiguous language concerning minimum wages. First, there is a positive message: statutory minimum wages may raise labour participation, sustain demand and reduce poverty and all of this [...]
Just as Paul Krugman has argued that we know how to get out of the American and European recession, we also know how to get out of the Eurozone (EZ) crisis—and could do so at the G20 meeting in Mexico today and/or at EU summit on 28-29 June. The crisis is entirely self-inflicted. For example—and [...]
Over the last four months, China has been claiming that it will help Europe’s financial woes by contributing billions of dollars to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Recently the G20 finance leaders told Europe that, if the IMF is to fortify the eurozone financial facility, Brussels has to beef it up further. Such a warning [...]
When the economic crisis broke following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the global banking system seized up, workers began to be laid off, families saw their houses repossessed and banks teetered on the brink of collapse. Financial panic knew no frontiers. It was clear that a coordinated global response by governments [...]
The outlook for the global economy in 2012 is clear, but it isn’t pretty: recession in Europe, anemic growth at best in the United States, and a sharp slowdown in China and in most emerging-market economies. Asian economies are exposed to China. Latin America is exposed to lower commodity prices (as both China and the [...]
As the world’s political leaders prepare for the Cannes G20 meeting at the end of this week, bold solutions to global economic problems are once again on the agenda. Similar to the London G20 in 2009, global economic circumstances require concerted actions and policy solutions from the world’s most important economies. But is the G20 [...]
Yet again banks have to be rescued because financial markets have gone wild. And because still no effective rules and regulations have been introduced to make banks pay for the high risks they are taking. It feels like “Groundhog Day”: Everything starts all over again, nobody seems to remember anything. Has anybody learned anything? After [...]
The possible collapse of the euro threatens the future of social democracy, not only in Europe but also throughout the world. Yet many on the left have silently welcomed the euro crisis because European Monetary Union (EMU) has been seen as a critical part of the neoliberal project that dominated world order over the past [...]
France, which now holds the presidency of the G-20, has chosen reform of the international monetary system as its main priority for the Cannes summit in November. But is the issue worth the time and energy officials will devote to it? And where can such discussions lead? When French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his G-20 [...]
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