The international financial system is passing through the agony of a new round of the Eurozone debt crisis for the simple reason that European governments, like that in the US, refuse to deal with the core of the economic recession in Europe for reasons of economic dogma.
Anyone who looks at the economic data for the [...]

Below is an interview with Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, Yanis Varoufakis which I recorded on Wednesday the 14th of September in Leinster House. Michael Taft, Research Officer with Unite the trade union was also on hand to ask some questions.
Yanis is the author of several books, two which were published during [...]

L’Humanite interview with Monique Pinçon-Charlot: “the rich have a money addiction that must be treated”
For sociologist Monique Pinçon-Charlot, the campaign against public deficits is an ideological weapon being used by neoliberals to do away with social rights all over the world.
Among the budgetary proposals to be discussed by the French government is a move [...]

Philip Lane’s thoughtful article in the Sunday Business Post helps clarify the debate. For while he argues for further fiscal contraction, this should not distract us from the underlying point of difference between those who support (more) austerity, and those who support an expansionist approach. Disputes over fiscal policy can mask more fundamental differences in economic [...]

The current falls in the prices of bank shares are widely covered in the financial media. However the overall pattern and scale of the decline in market evaluation of banking shares is still not sufficiently frequently drawn together. The aim of this note is therefore to show this pattern in clear terms. It reveals market [...]

In one sense Greece was finished the moment the Great Recession cut its growth rate (in the second quarter of 2009) from among the highest in Europe to almost zero.
Given its high, and increasing, debt-to-GDP ratio, not to mention the preceding run on Dubai’s private-cum-sovereign debt, Greece’s stalled economy precipitated a run on Greek bonds. [...]

“There is no doubt social welfare spending has to come down. Joan Burton has already done a huge amount of work on addressing the area of welfare fraud and overclaiming,”
“She gave the Government a briefing last Tuesday on the very significant progress she is making on it. In addition to that there is a whole [...]

Attempts to assess current prospects for the world economy have primarily focused on deceleration  in US and European GDP growth. But world trade is clearly also indicating negative trends.
Trade is a particularly sensitive indicator as its fluctuations have had a greater magnitude than those for GDP but have moved in the same direction. Trade data is [...]

For months now we have been reading and hearing European political leaders decry the manner in which the perfidious ratings agencies (Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch) have continued to downgrade the ailing Eurozone economies. On the 13th of July, last,   the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble expressed his bewilderment and inability to “decipher” the [...]

This article was originally posted today on Socialist Economic Bulletin.
There’s a very good piece on LabourList titled ‘Who Didn’t Predict a Riot?’ It lists many of the bodies or leading individuals who warned that deep cuts to public spending would lead to social unrest and violence. The short piece is worth reading in full, but [...]