Essays
Public Debt: How the classical economists looked upon it (wonkish) – Guest article by Nicholas Theocarakis
, 28/11/2014
With so much talk about public debt, the so-called debt crisis etc., it is perhaps time to take a close look at the history of the concept; of how public debt was born, on the evolution of its nature and, even more poignantly, of the manner in which economists have interpreted and evaluated its purpose […]
Klaus Kastner replies – On the Versailles Treaty parallels
, 19/11/2014
Continuing the discussion we began on modern parallels to the Versailles Treaty (the Greek Bailout, as I claimed here, or Maastricht, as Klaus Kastner juxtaposed here – see also my rejoinder here), Klaus Kastner takes stock with this, latest, missive.
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD (video), UC Berkeley, 7th Nov. 2014
, 18/11/2014
Click the image above to watch a 60′ keynote on Money, and its Aesthetics, after the Gold Standard, following by a presentation by Danae Stratou of her remarkable installation ‘It’s Time to Open the Black Boxes’ – click here for a full description (and pictures and video) of that work.
Was Maastricht another Versailles for the German nation? A reply to Klaus Kastner
, 16/11/2014
Klaus Kastner suggests that Germans cannot sympathise with my analogy of the Greek Bailout as a new Versailles Treaty because many, in Germany, feel that Maastricht was another Versailles Treaty imposed, by France, upon them. While there is no doubt that France tried, and failed, to adopt a predatory attitude toward Germany (and toward the […]
Klaus Kastner responds to the Geithner revelations, and my Versailles Treaty allegory
, 14/11/2014
Klaus Kastner, a regular interlocutor of this blog, has responded to the Geithner revelations (and my take on them) on how Northern European finance ministers were bent on ‘crushing the Greeks’, back in February 2010, with the following:
CRUSH THE GREEKS! The Greek bailout revisited in the light of the Geithner revelations
, 13/11/2014
Tim Geithner is now on the public record,[1] confirming that which we have always known: In February 2010, clueless as to the Euro Crisis that was about to engulf them, Northern European leaders decided to crush Greece. Collectively to punish (against even the Geneva Convention) a nation for having gone bankrupt within a Eurozone whose […]
Preface to the (forthcoming) French edition of THE GLOBAL MINOTAUR
, 12/11/2014
The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the future of the world economy is about to be published in French, as Le Minotaure Planétaire, by newly established, progressive publishing house LES ÉDITIONS DU CERCLE. Read on for a draft of the Preface I composed for this French edition (which is now added to the German, Spanish, […]
Why is Europe not ‘coming together’ in the aftermath of the euro crisis? – audio
, 10/11/2014
This talk was delivered to the PhD Colloquium of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, on 6th November 2014. It was based on this article and is part of my research for my next book EUROPE UNHINGED: The next phase of the global crisis.
A QE proposal for Europe’s crisis – OpEd in The Economist
, 10/11/2014
The Economist kindly invited me to contribute an op-ed to a ’roundtable’ on what form Quantitative Easing should take place in Europe. For The Economist’s site click here. Or read on…
Why the Fiscal Compact is, legally, null and void: Interview by Giuseppe Guarino
, 10/11/2014
In this fascinating interview, published in Corriere della Sera on 29th October 2014 and reproduced here in English, Professor Giuseppe Guarino, a former finance minister of Italy, argues that the Fiscal Compact never had a legal leg to stand on. Additionally, he also claims that, legally, the 3% deficit limit (in the Maastricht and later the […]
MODERN MONEY: AESTHETICS AFTER THE GOLD STANDARD, UC Berkeley, Friday 7th November 2014
, 04/11/2014
An Academic Conference, sponsored by the Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley, November 6–7, 2014 Featured Speaker: Yanis Varoufakis Featured Artist: Danae Stratou Contact sferguson at usf.edu and jordanrose at berkeley.edu for more information. (The image is Andy Warhol’s 200 One Dollar Bills, 1962)
Today’s Eurozone seen from an investor’s perspective – Keynote (audio)
, 01/11/2014
On 30th October I was invited to address a meeting of German, Austrian and Swiss pension fund managers on how they should make sense of the Eurozone’s current state of play. In this keynote (click below for the audio and the accompanying slides) I present an explanation of the causes underlying the impossible dilemmas pension fund […]
Discussing the ECB’s stress tests on ‘Boom Bust, RT tv
, 28/10/2014
For the tv interview click here or the photo above (and jump to 21′). A related, analytical, article, can be found here.
The ECB’s Stress Tests and our Banking Dis-Union: A case of gross institutional failure
, 27/10/2014
Last Sunday the ECB published its quality assurance results, its stress tests of our systemic banks. It was, from where I am standing, a sad day.
Of Europe’s bankers and politicians – Interview in SUOMEN KUVALEHTI
, 25/10/2014
An interview with Antti Ronkainen published in SUOMEN KUVALEHTI (in Finnish). Click here for the original or read on…
Greece’s Finance Minister: The revolving doors’ syndrome on steroids
, 20/10/2014
Now that the bubble of the Greek success story has, thankfully, burst, it is perhaps apt to take a good look at the track record of Greece’s finance minister: the talented Mr Gikas Hardouvelis. Readers that harboured hopes of a Greek turn-around (against this blog’s repeated warnings) ought to brace themselves – the finance minister’s […]
Egalitarianism’s Latest Foe: a critical review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century
, 08/10/2014
The Real-World Economics Review commissioned a number of us to write critical reviews of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. They include, beside the over-signed, David Colander, Edward Fullbrook (who must be credited for the whole issue), James K. Galbraith, Michael Hudson, Richard Koo, Richard Parker, Ann Pettifor, and Robert Wade – see below for links to […]
Centralisation-Without-Representation: A reply to Frances Coppola, Simon Wren-Lewis and Niall Ferguson
, 03/10/2014
[This post was later published by Open Democracy] Behind the European Union’s official ‘line’ that the worst of the Euro Crisis is behind us, a flurry of proposals for institutional changes reveal a deep-seated anxiety about the Eurozone. Indeed, in recent weeks, even the German finance minister, Mr Wolfgang Schäuble, went public with an op-ed […]
Frances Coppola and Simon Wren-Lewis on the ‘Modest Proposal vs Austerian Federalists’
, 26/09/2014
In Whither Europe? The Modest Camp vs the Federalist Austerians James Galbraith and I attempted to chart the evolution of various plans to save the Eurozone. In that survey, we juxtaposed a Modest Camp (that includes our own Modest Proposal), whose philosophy is to promote a minimalist agenda for stabilising the Eurozone and ending its socio-economic crisis before Europe’s future […]
CAN EUROPE ESCAPE ITS CRISIS WITHOUT TURNING INTO AN IRON CAGE?
, 07/09/2014
ON THE MODEST PROPOSAL’S POLITICAL, CONSTITUTIONAL AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS [Image: Rembrandt’s ‘The Abduction of Europa’] This article is a sequel to an earlier piece entitled ‘Why is Europe not coming together in response to the Euro Crisis?’ and is best read in conjunction with this article (co-authored with James K. Galbraith) that compares our Modest […]
Chosen Cells – WdW Review
, 29/08/2014
Chosen Cells is a sequel to Solitary Subversives and our seventh article for Witte de With Review (an initiative of Rotterdam-based Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) of which we, vitalspace.org and I, are their… ‘Athens Desk’). Click here for the Witte de With Review site which contains several photos missing here. Or read on…
WHY IS EUROPE NOT ‘COMING TOGETHER’ IN RESPONSE TO THE EURO CRISIS?
, 29/08/2014
In this article I ask a question on everyone’s lips: Almost everyone agrees that the Eurozone was a one-legged giant; a monetary union lacking a political ‘leg’ to stabilise it. If so, why has the Euro Crisis (which surely strengthened that view on the back of its ferocity and durability) not strengthen the hand of […]
ON EUROPE’S RETREATING UNION: DIAGNOSIS AND A PROPOSAL
, 27/08/2014
FRIENDS OF EUROPE, an official publication of the EU, kindly commissioned me to write a short article on the State of the Union after the European Parliament elections, in the run up to the magazine’s 9th October conference of the same theme. You can read the article on the FoE’s website or just continue below