Search Results for: bbc
Guest Post: Today Germany is the big loser, not Greece – by Marshall Auerbach
, 20/05/2012
Just before the Crisis erupted, in April 2010, with Greece falling into the troika’s embrace in May 2010, I had written an article (A New Versailles haunts Europe) to argue that Germany was about to commit the error that the winners’ of World War I had committed by imposing upon Germany the Versailles Treaty. It was […]
Europe’s impending Phantom Limp Syndrome
, 26/02/2012
This being the weekend, and waking up in Adelaide about to be immersed in the performance and visual arts (also known as the Adelaide Festival), permit me a different kind of thought/post for the day; an impressionistic comment on all this talk about severing some of the eurozone’s member-states in order to ‘save’ the eurozone; […]
The Snowflake That Started an Avalanche: Three recent interviews
, 20/10/2011
With the eyes of a stunned world trained, yet again on Greece, the international media have returned to Athens. I keep suggesting to them that they are wasting their time. That the real game is happening elsewhere – in the corridors of the French and German banks, in the meetings between German officials and the […]
Understanding the Euro Crisis: A talk at the Shellbourne Hotel, Dublin
, 23/09/2011
The good people at www.politico.ie took the trouble of transcribing my unscripted talk the other day on Understandind the Euro Crisis, presented at the Shellbourne Hotel, Dublin. You can read it by visiting their site here and you can in fact hear me deliver the talk by clicking here. I also paste the text of […]
Why Eurobonds are Essential and Fiscal Union a Folly (Or how to escape the equally untenable positions of German economists Thomas Straubhaar and Otmar Issing)
, 17/08/2011
The context: In the middle of a mighty bushfire the fire brigade just held a summit between its chief fire fighters (Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy) to discuss the importance of biodiversity, leaving the flames to destroy the forest. Italy and Spain are collapsing. The EFSF, the only institution that was set up to deal […]
On the US and EU debt crises: My ten minute Radio Scotland interview
, 08/08/2011
Last Saturday, I was interviewd by Derek Bateman on BBC Radio Scotland. I post that interview here only because Derek put some poignant questions regarding the linkages between the EU and US crises and, more so, the irrationality of the EU’s approach (on which I shall have much more to say in an already promised […]
American Common Sense on Europe: The NYT largely adopting the logic of the Modest Proposal, and even Jeffrey Sachs making sympathetic noises
, 07/07/2011
For some time the rest of the world has been finding it hard to follow the passionate infighting in the US over the federal budget. Only two years after Barrack Obama’s landslide, the United States became, effectively, ungovernable. The current standoff regarding the mystical (to non-Americans) debt ceiling causes a mixture of consternation and incredulity […]
The Penny Is Dropping: Mervyn King, Daniel Gros, Jim O'Neill, and the increasing relevance of the Modest Proposal
, 26/06/2011
This blog has been risking its readers’ sanity by repeating ad nauseam, and in a myriad different guises, the claim that the euro crisis is, at root, a chain of bank insolvencies causally attached to another (derivative) chain of member-state insolvencies. And that, as such, all attempts to deal with the resulting Crisis by rivers […]
Making amends: Restoring the voice of an Irish activist (which I had, unwittingly, played a part in suppressing)
, 20/06/2011
In my previous post, I mentioned a debate between Daniel Gross, a German based colleague and myself. (You can hear it here – beginning on the 38th minute). Well, in saying that, I was as guilty as the BBC anchor of silencing a fourth voice on that program. That of Kate Bopp, an Irish activist, […]
On the Political Economics of Dominic Strauss Kahn's Political Death
, 16/05/2011
This post is about the economic and political significance of Dominic Strauss Kahn’s (DSK hereafter) arrest. It will say nothing about the merits or otherwise of the charges against Dominic Strauss Kahn, the IMF’s Managing Director. All cases of alleged sexual assault brought against high profile men place two equally important (yet often counter-opposed) demands […]
A brief radio interview on the first anniversary of the Greek government's request for a massive, destructive loan
, 22/04/2011
Some folks requested a link to my last BBC interview on the one year anniversary of the Greek so-called bail out request. Here it is (jump to around the 9 minute 20 second point to go directly to the relevant segment): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p00g2f90
A year ago, Greece asked to be 'bailed out'. The writing was on the wall…
, 21/04/2011
Having just been interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on the anniversary of Greece’ request for the 110 billion euro loan from the EU-IMF, I thought I should look at what I had said last year this time when asked, by the same station, to comment on that loan request. Believe me when I say that […]
It's the (German) banks, stupid!
, 16/04/2011
Or what’s behind Germany’s hesitant statements on Greek debt restructuring, Ireland’s move against subordinated bondholders and the ECB’s stance on interest rates
The Empire is Striking Back, gross failure continues to be handsomely rewarded, and the world economy struggles to find its footing without the Global Minotaur.
, 03/04/2011
That the Empire has struck back there is no doubt. Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd C. Blankfein just rewarded himself with $19 million bonus for 2010: the year during which he appeared in front of a Senate Committee, a court , an SEC investigation revealing in full technicolor the great variety in which GS broke the law, manipulated […]
Modest Proposal 2.0, as presented at the European Party of the Left Athens Conference, on 12th March 2011
, 15/03/2011
This post is for those of you who wanted to read my presentation of the Modest Proposal Version 2.0 at the conference on the Debt Crisis organised by the European Party of the Left, 12th March 2011, in downtown Athens. The text follows. (As it happened, a dearth of headphones meant that most of the […]