debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
In the 12 years of the Great Depression – between the stock-market crash of 1929 and America’s mobilization for World War II – production in the United States averaged roughly 15% below the pre-depression trend, implying a total output shortfall equal to 1.8 years of GDP. Today, even if US production returns to its stable-inflation [...]
Crisis is a word that occurs frequently in newspapers, on television, in everyday conversation, which is sufficient to justify, from time to time, financial difficulties, increases in prices, the decrease in demand, the lack of liquidity, the imposition of new taxes or all these things taken together. “Economic crisis” is – according to dictionaries – [...]
Neville Chamberlain is remembered today as the British prime minister who, as an avatar of appeasement of Nazi Germany in the late 1930’s, helped to usher Europe into World War II. But, earlier in that fateful decade, relatively soon after the start of the Great Depression, the British economy was rapidly returning to its previous [...]
It is now increasingly clear that what started in late 2008 is no ordinary economic slump. Almost four years after the beginning of the crisis, developed economies have not managed a sustainable recovery, and even the better-off countries reveal signs of weakness. Faced with the certainty of a double-dip recession, Europe’s difficulties are daunting. Not [...]
In a year of revolution, causes have been easier to identify than consequences. In 1989, following the end of the Cold War, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in The End of History? of the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism”, marking “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of [...]
OK, so the euro area seems bent on committing suicide. The UK appears to believe that austerity and stagnation will be more bearable if done in splendid isolation. The US political system is locked in arcane disputes while the economy stagnates and labour market and fiscal problems pile up. Meanwhile big emerging markets such as [...]
The world financial crisis of 2008-2009, which did not turn into a ‘Great Depression’ only because central banks and governments worldwide prevented a complete ‘meltdown’ of the financial system and more severe repercussions in the real sectors, has left the public finances of many countries in dire straits. In the EU, the period of financial [...]
In the wake of the Irish crisis, Timothy Garton Ash passed a damning judgment on the government of Angela Merkel: “If the eurozone falls apart, it will be because Germany did not do enough to save it” (Guardian 25 November 2010). This has a certain superficial appeal, because German inflexibility on debt management and its [...]
To paraphrase Denmark’s Prince Hamlet, ‘To enact austerity or not to enact austerity, that is the question.’ Unfortunately, dear Hamlet, that is a question without a sure answer. The truth is, none of the experts know what is the correct thing to do. Trichet, Bernanke, Geithner, Schäuble, Krugman, Stiglitz, Wolf, Münchau, Soros, all of them [...]
It is all too easy when in the midst of a major financial and economic crisis, as Europe is now, to look inwards, to turn one’s back to the rest of the world, to argue that we will return to these wider responsibilities once we have put our own house in order. Easy, but, I [...]
Although the global economic crisis was triggered by the foregoing financial crisis, the more deeply rooted cause appears to have been the global imbalances, created by uneven developments in qualitative, knowledge-based competitiveness and the weakening thereof (primarily due to the marketifying of education in some developed countries). And, secondly, by the uneven development of cost [...]
I was considering weighing in on the topical issue of global currency chaos, but happily I can save myself most of the associated trouble by referring readers to the clear and thoughtful column just published by Jean Pisani-Ferry. I am in broad agreement with Jean’s analysis regarding the current situation and can therefore restrict myself [...]
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