Tuesday, Feb 7th 2012
Ireland is not Greece: we get a lot of that from Government ministers, Troika officials and commentators. This truism, however, says less than it purports to. Yes, Ireland is not Greece. Ireland is not Belgium, Romania, Brunei, the Yukon Territory or Idaho, either. Of course, the message is that Greece is a basket-case that no [...]
What are bankers doing inside EU summits? | Corporate Europe Observatory
Important information here on the extent of bank lobbies influence in the resolution of the Greek debt crisis, particularly when it comes to plans which require ‘private sector involvement’.
At the Euro Summits in July and October 20111, crucial decisions “to save the Euro” and “to [...]
The new transitional government in Greece was cobbled together for one and only objective: to attempt to put into operation the October 26th Brussels Agreement. It was assembled by those political forces that subscribe to that Agreement and want to put into operation a whole series of austerity measures by its European architects. The above [...]
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 [...]
Last week, the European Union Council agreed on a set of policies for tackling the euro crisis. It was hoped that the new agreement (hereafter referred to as the October Agreement) would be a decisive step toward resolving a slow burning crisis that threatened to derail the euro, plunge the EU itself into a process [...]
As every Radio, TV and social media outfit in Europe, including here in Ireland, is talking about Greece, the 50% haircut etc, I thought it would be useful for those of us who read the ILR to revisit the issue from another angle. To take note of some of the comments made, verbatim, by 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 [...]
Just a reminder of the following tonight. Michael Taft and I interviewed Yanis Varoufakis in Leinster House yesterday and I will be posting that as a podcast this evening hopefully. Also Yanis was on the panel of Tonight with Vincent Browne last night, which can be viewed on the TV3 site.
Public Meeting
Understanding the Euro Crisis
Thursday [...]
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. [...]
When Lenin alighted on 3rd April 1917 at Petrograd’s Finland Station, a train was set in motion that upstaged, and eventually overturned, the Mensheviks’ plan for an ‘evolutionary’ path from absolute Tsarism to some form of social democracy. Ironically, it took a Finnish social democrat (newly elected finance minister Jutta Urpilainen) to derail once and [...]
