Press release from Debt Justice Action’s Not Our Debt campaign.
The campaign group Anglo: Not Our Debt has sharply criticized the EU’s new ‘fiscal treaty’. Campaign spokesperson Marie Moran described the treaty as “akin to someone being advised to keep the doors of their house locked tomorrow while thieves were ransacking it today”. “There is something [...]

I have an article on Politico.ie about the Fiscal Compact Treaty, and how all the economic decisions made by the Irish government are not dictated to them by our “EU masters” but follow the usual power template of Ireland’s “comprador class”.
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The final draft of the Fiscal compact is now available, meaning Irish pundits can no [...]

Please circulate this statement far and wide within your trade union
UNI Europa, the European regional organisation of the UNI global trade union federation, has described the EU fiscal stability treaty as “anti-social, anti-democratic and anti-European.” Trade unions are mobilising across Europe to stop governments from cementing in neo-liberal austerity policies for years to come.
“With this [...]

The Government, in signing the Fiscal Treaty, has effectively committed itself to introducing up to €6 billion more in tax increases and spending cuts in the medium-term, over and above what it has already planned.  While the news in the short-term will, understandably, focus on whether a referendum will be necessary, once attention starts honing [...]

This article was originally published in the journal.ie last night.
How many speculators does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none. They still think the broken one works.
The business model of asset price speculation - the model that broke the world - informs the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA), and it is [...]

On Saturday, the Irish Times devoted a full page to the question of whether austerity is working, on foot of the letter by 60 prominent public figures. International commentators such as Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini and domestic commentators Terence McDonagh from UCG, Brid O’Brien from the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed and businessperson Brian [...]

In the presence of the gentry, Old Kenny the peasant, doffed his cap, crooked his knee, arranged his face in an expression of obsequious servility and said: ‘Savin’ yer presence, yer honours, but sure ’tis all our own fault, for we’re a feckless nation an’ not used at all at all to the ways of [...]

Translation of an article by Manuel Castells, originally published in La Vanguardia, 21st January 2012.
The indignados movement that burst forth in 2011 in Spain, Europe and the United States is a breath of fresh air in a world that smells rotten. They set out in social networks and in acampadas what many people think: that it was banks [...]

There was no need for Mario Draghi’s words to understand that the crisis has already reached an irreversible threshold in Europe. A crisis of “systemic dimensions” was what Jean-Claude Trichet said a couple of months ago. Now Draghi, his successor at the European Central Bank, tells us that “the situation has worsened” (January 16th).  It is [...]

Media outlets are reporting a new crackdown on the unemployed.  Apparently, the Department of Social Protection intends to introduce new regulations whereby ‘target-dates’ for exiting the Live Register will be set for different categories of unemployed.  If someone remains on the Live Register past that target-date, they may be subject to a new set of interviews [...]