An interactive map of Labour’s problems

May 18, 2015

Below is a map of the problems that the Labour Party faces. This an interactive map of all the constituencies in the UK which shows which party made the biggest gains. You can click and hold to drag the map around, zoom in or run the cursor over a constituency to see the details. If […]

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What next for Labour?

May 11, 2015

Losing a nights sleep on election night and then spending every waking minute since pondering the implications of the Tory victory has left me feeling shattered. So much has changed in such a short space of time that its going to take a long while to work it all out. Here are a few thoughts […]

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What’s wrong with the Labour Party and the left?

May 8, 2015

Woke up the morning after to discover the Tories have an outright majority. I feel very, very angry with the Labour, and with the left, as I have done for much of my adult life. The almost consistent unwillingness of the Labour Party to think, plan and fight for actual power appalls me. Since 1951 […]

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A glimmer of good news from Germany

May 5, 2015

One of the depressing and sad things about the mess in the eurozone is the way the German people have been manoeuvred into supporting the very system that has suppressed their living standards for over a decade. Maybe that is changing – a bit.

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“The Syriza strategy has come to an end”

May 4, 2015

In a joint interview with German daily Der Tagesspiegel and ThePressProject International, Syriza MP and economist Costas Lapavitsas says that the time has come for Greece and its partners to understand that “they are flogging a dead horse”. I mostly agree with the analysis of Lapavitsas, however I am not convinced that a Grexit can […]

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Is the EU working for regime change in Athens?

April 25, 2015

The great Troika-Syriza dance seems to go on forever, every deadline is reached and then extended. The most common interpretation of this dance of financial tension is that it is one long exercise of brinkmanship by both sides who are both trying to squeeze out maximum advantage by being the last to blink. The most […]

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Ordoliberalism and the European Project

April 22, 2015

Very few people have heard of Ordoliberalism. Which is odd because Ordoliberalism is the German school of political economy that shaped the development of the West German post-war economy and governance, and which in turn provided the blueprint for the creation of the European Single Market and the flawed architecture of the Eurozone. Ordoliberalism principles […]

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Yanis Varoufakis on the Greek economy, prospects for reform and economic renewal

April 20, 2015

The Greek government has been very active in the US recently as it tries to get the US Government to put pressure on the Troika to change its approach. Indications are that the US is pretty sympathetic and the events of the next few months will indicate if there has indeed been any shift in […]

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Why the German trade surplus is a big problem

April 13, 2015

In the popular discussion of economics, in the media for example, some things are always assumed to be good and some are assumed to be bad. So trade surpluses are always good and deficits are always bad. Export are good and imports are not so good. Government budget surpluses are good and budget deficits are […]

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It’s going to be a tough year for the Greeks

April 10, 2015

One of the sad ironies of the Greek debt fiasco is that it is the IMF, which has the reputation of being the iron hand of international finance, that is the most conciliatory of Greece’s creditors. The IMF, against it’s better judgment was carried along at the time the Troika was assembled in 2010 by […]

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Too big to bail – how the banks crashed the eurozone

April 7, 2015

“The eurozone crisis is as much a tale of excess bank leverage and poor risk management in the core as of excess consumption and wasteful investment in the periphery” Why stricter rules threaten the eurozone Simon Tilford and Philip Whyte The global financial crisis began in 2007 and by 2008 it was causing a series […]

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Is there an alternative to austerity in the eurozone?

March 31, 2015

The answer to the question “Is there an alternative to austerity in the eurozone”, is both yes and no. Yes, because technically the policies that are needed during a prolonged deflationary recession have been well known for decades. No, because unfortunately the way the eurozone architecture was designed, and the correlation of political forces it […]

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No comment ;)

March 26, 2015

Source

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China, cement and the future

March 26, 2015

China has been running a high export, high investment economy for a couple of decades. The result has been that China has the smallest share of national product going to domestic consumption of any economy ever. The Chinese people have got much richer but their share of the national product has actually fallen and in […]

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What if………?

March 20, 2015

The Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has posted an interesting short piece on his blog making some very important points about the Greek-Germany debt issue. He raises an interesting ‘what if….” question.

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European Commission veto Greek anti-poverty law

March 18, 2015

With less than a days notice the European Commission has effectively vetoed a new anti-poverty law that was due to be voted on in the Greek parliament today. The new law, known as the “humanitarian crisis bill”, authorised the provision of free electricity for some households, as well as measures to address poverty among pensioners […]

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Here are four charts, a video and ‘fingergate’

March 18, 2015

The charts are from Credit Suisse research and show some trends in the eurozone revealing continuing weakness. The video is a seminar in Croatia in May 2013 where Yanis Varoufakis discussed his book the “The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy”. Varoufakis is not the best writer but his book […]

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The cost of bailing out the banks

March 15, 2015

  I have explained in previous posts that the various national bailouts that happened across the eurozone were actually bailouts of the banks. The way this was done, via bailing out national governments so they could in turn bailout the banking system, means that what was a bad debt incurred by reckless lending in the […]

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The money Greece has to find in the coming months

March 11, 2015

The core issue around the Greek debt burden is how quickly and how fast it can repay its debts. The central Syriza position is that trying to squeeze too much too quickly out of the economy has shrunk the economy and thus made finding the money to repay its debts harder. It has also caused […]

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Bailing out the German banks

March 8, 2015

For the first time in public an official from the IMF has admitted what most observes have known all along, that the various Greek bailouts were not for the Greeks at all. ”They gave money to save German and French banks, not Greece,” said Paolo Batista, one of the Executive Directors of International Monetary Fund […]

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