Wednesday, Feb 8th 2012
The outcome of the EU summit has widely been hailed in the British media as a triumph for David Cameron. It is rare that a complete rupture and isolation in multi-party negotiations is regarded as a triumph - but this is a function of the dominant and still growing xenophobia of the British press.
The EU [...]
Since the European Union entails the free movement of capital, fiscal and labour sovereignty had to be ceded. This was one of the most important criticisms from the left regarding the way a perfect European Union was being built for bringing an end to the welfare state of each one of its members. If you [...]
As we are forced to look at the budget over two days, a particular unnecessary cruelty, it’s worth emphasising, as those in the ULA and Sinn Fein have done, that this is a budget based on political choices. It is depressing to watch seasoned politicans like Pat Rabbitte claim pathetically that if they didn’t make [...]
The vote yesterday to extend the bank guarantee for another year, combined with the reassuring statement from Michael Noonan that its impossible to forecast when the bank guarantee scheme will end, confirms Jim Stewart’s prognosis that the main problem in the EU at the moment is:
“…the prevailing consensus (held for example by the President of the [...]
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books | Review of Anderson’s The New Old World
In 2000 when he was relaunching the New Left Review Perry Anderson claimed “For the first time since the Reformation there are no longer any significant oppositions - that is, systematic rival outlooks - within the thought-world of the West: and scarcely [...]
Introduction: a pattern of dependency
The collapse of the Irish economy has come as a particular shock to many people, at home and abroad, because of its seemingly remarkable success in the preceding years, the period of very rapid economic growth that saw the country, from the early 1990s onwards, described as the ‘Celtic Tiger’. However, [...]
Words of a Euro Doomsayer Have New Resonance | Betting on Bernard Connolly
Good god….
Bernard Connolly was “a European Union economist in the early 1990s, where he helped design the common currency’s framework, but then he was dismissed after he expressed turncoat views. In 1998, just months before the euro’s introduction, he predicted that at least one [...]
The November edition of the Socialist Voice is out now
Areas cover in this issue are:-
Should Ireland remain in the euro?
Occupy Dame Street: The left must become involved
Occupy Dame Street:A positive development but lacking a class understanding
Did Lenin ask for a stimulus package?
The unemployment experience.
Job losses batter Co. Waterford
Crisis in social housing worsen.
The impact of the [...]
The initial enthusiasm of the financial markets over the last European summit was short lived as the new “kick down the can, grand plan” to solve the crisis was agreed upon.
To bolster the market, the remnants of the famous EFSF 440 billions Euros - which, never forget, was also provided by the periphery countries it [...]
Michael Roberts has a very good post on the appointment of the technocrats, Lucas Papademos in Greece and Mario Monti or Giuliano Amato in Italy, who are supposed to lead Greece and Italy through those “much needed reforms” that these countries need to reduce their oh so troubling debt levels. The ‘reforms’ or austerity, are [...]
