Yanis Varoufakis: Risk has not been diminished, just taken out of sight Ten years after its near-death experience, capitalism is back to its old ways. Bailouts for the few and austerity for the many have caused global debt to rise 40% since 2007. Yes, British and European banks have contracted (as US authorities required Barclays, Deutsche […]
Essays
Our Progressive International movement will fight, at once, two authoritarianisms: The National International and the Financialised Globalists who paved the ground for them – Yanis Varoufakis & Bernie Sanders in THE GUARDIAN (13th September 2018)
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Our new international movement will fight rising nationalism, its underlying fascist moment, and the pseudo-liberal establishment whose policies gave rise to it (Click here for The Guardian) Our era will be remembered for the triumphant march of a globally unifying rightwing – a Nationalist International – that sprang out of the cesspool of financialised capitalism. […]
Lessons from 2008 for beyond 2018: Keynote this Friday 14th September at the OECD, Paris
Before 2008 we could all see that global trade imbalances were growing inexorably, creating a glut of savings in surplus countries that flowed into deficit countries, causing house price, stock exchange and debt bubbles whose bursting would never end well. What few could see, however, was that, behind the dominant narrative of unfettered competition and […]
Ten Years After Lehman’s Collapse: What caused the Crash of 2008 is now shaping our post-modern 1930s – der Freitag
In the autumn of 2008 events unfolded in Wall Street that the crushing majority of people around the world had been led to believe could never occur. It was the financial equivalent of watching the sun spinning out of control soon after it rose above the horizon. Humanity watched on in collective disbelief. The […]
Im Reich der Gier – der Freitag
Mythos Der Kapitalismus ist entzaubert und bringt uns das größte Faschismusproblem seit den Dreißigern Was im Herbst 2008 an der Wall Street geschah, hatten die allermeisten Menschen bis dahin für unmöglich gehalten, schließlich hatte man ihnen jahrelang weisgemacht, dass etwas Derartiges schlichtweg nicht passieren könnte. Es war, als ob man dabei zuguckt, wie die Sonne, kurz […]
Democracy, Socialism, Europe and Scottish Independence – four clips on STV
PART 1 – WHY SOCIALISM? Interviewer: You are meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to discuss socialism. Why? Varoufakis: Because democracy needs a healthy democratic socialist movement to be part of the political process in order to be healthy PART 2 – REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL PART 3 – DEMOCRATS MUST GET TOGETHER ACROSS PARTY POLITICAL AND NATIONAL […]
The three tribes of austerity: enemies of big government, Germany’s social democrats, and tax-cutting Republicans – op-ed in Project Syndicate
No policy is as self-defeating during recessionary times as the pursuit of a budget surplus for the purpose of containing public debt – austerity, for short. So, as the world approaches the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is appropriate to ask why austerity proved so popular with Western political elites following […]
Έσπρωξαν την Ελλάδα στον γκρεμό και γιορτάζουν το γκελ που έκανε στον σκληρό βράχο της Μεγάλης Ύφεσής. Έφτιαξαν μια έρημο και την ονόμασαν ειρήνη – άρθρο στον χτεσινό The Observer
Την περασμένη εβδομάδα οι τίτλοι και τα πρωτοσέλιδα των ΜΜΕ «γιόρτασαν το τέλος της οικονομικής διάσωσης της Ελλάδας, ακόμη και τη λήξη της λιτότητας, ενώ παρουσίασαν την οκταετή παρέμβαση της Ευρώπης στην Ελλάδα ως πρότυπο συνετής ευρωπαϊκής αλληλεγγύης στο “μαύρο πρόβατό” της, μια περίπτωση “αυστηρής αγάπης” που φέρεται να λειτούργησε. Όμως μία πιο προσεκτική ματιά αποκαλύπτει μία […]
Greece was never bailed out; it remains a debtor’s prison and the EU won’t let go of the keys – op-ed in The Observer
Over the past week, the world’s media have been proclaiming the successful completion of the Greek financial rescue programmemounted in 2010 by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Headlines celebrated the end of Greece’s bailout, even the termination of austerity. Buoyant reports from ground zero of the eurozone crisis portrayed Europe’s eight-year long Greek […]
Farewell Uri Avnery (1923-2018), Israeli humanist who demonstrated that there is no such thing as an Arab-Israeli conflict – just a constant struggle against racism, colonialism & misanthropy
Humanism is poorer this week. Uri Avnery has died. Soldier number 44410 of the Israel army, spent the following decades defending human decency in the land that he loved and struggled to make a welcoming home for Jews and Arabs alike. From his 1953 report of the raid on Qibya in Jordan, where an Israeli unit commanded by […]