debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Paul Krugman picks up on the Eurostat statistics on wages and wage developments in the private sector across Europe. He concludes that the experiment of an ‘internal wage devaluation’ which the Euro Area in particular is trying to practise is very hard to achieve since downwards nominal wage rigidities (DNWR) are preventing nominal wages from falling. [...]
Sven Giegold (MEP for the German Greens) has an interesting comment piece in Handelsblatt: while focusing on Portugal, it is illustrative of much that is wrong with economic policymaking in Europe. He reports that 17 of the 20 largest Portuguese listed companies organise at least part of their activities in the form of holding companies [...]
How Crisis Policies in Southern Europe Threaten the EU’s Social Dimension. The harsh austerity measures that, according to official policy, are supposed to overcome the euro crisis have once again plunged Europe into recession in 2012. Austerity policy has proved – in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain (GIPS) – to be primarily an attack on [...]
The year we have just left behind has clearly demonstrated that the current European crisis politics is stretching national democratic orders to breaking point, especially in crisis countries. Unfortunately, this trend looks set to continue in 2013. Euractiv reports that the Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva (pictured) himself is sending the new Portuguese austerity budget [...]
The more the evidence builds up on the disastrous effects of austerity on economic activity and jobs, the more those that are responsible for this failure become lyrical. The Commission’s autumn economic forecasts already carried the imaginative title of ‘sailing through rough waters’. Last Monday, an opinion piece in the FT can be read as [...]
Comment on Professor Maria Joao Rodrigues’ paper on “Mapping Future Scenarios for the Eurozone” In the early days of November 2012 the Greek Prime Minister, Antonis Samaras, announced that the approval of a new austerity package by the Parliament, essential for receiving a disbursement from the “troika”, was a condition for remaining in the euro. [...]
The international financial crisis had disastrous consequences for Portugal in terms of economic growth, public debt and unemployment. Yet, the impact of the European sovereign debt crisis was more dramatic: a mounting budget deficit and recession led to rapid growth of sovereign debt. Shut out of bond markets, Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in seeking emergency [...]
The latest unemployment statistics from Eurostat are disastrous: Unemployment has reached 11,3% on average in the Euro Area, with countries such as Spain and Greece facing unemployment spikes as high as 25% and 23%. Moreover, worse is yet to come since many economies are at this moment suffering from a double dip recession and will [...]
Nouriel Roubini famously described the long decline of the euro as a ‘slow motion train wreck’. Mind you, economists disagree on exactly when the wreck will happen. Vicente Navarro has argued on this site that the euro will survive for as long as it serves the purposes of the German (and European) elite while, in [...]
At the end of July, the Conference Board (a business sector driven research association based in New York) published a study pointing out that several crisis ridden countries in Europe are now recording significant cuts in wage costs. In their view, these falling unit wage costs are rebalancing competitive positions between the core and the [...]
Analysis of the Adaptation Programmes Reveals Policy Failures In a comprehensive study for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Klaus Busch, Professor (retired) of European Studies at the University of Osnabrück, meticulously charts political crisis management since the beginning of the crisis in the Euro Area in 2010: »A manifold policy failure is evident during this brief time-period which [...]
Since 2008, the world has been witnessing a struggle between politics and financial markets. The objective of a number of policy-makers is to limit the power of the financial industry to avoid another rescue package. The objective of the financial industry is to protect itself from economic interference. The result of this uneven struggle seems [...]
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