Naked Keynesianism

The referendum that just took place in Greece in which 61.3% of voters rejected the terms of an international ‘bailout’ package should not be read as a vote in favour of leaving the euro. The ‘No’ vote – όχι in Greek – is, as correctly pointed out by James K. Galbraith, the only hope for Europe. On the other hand, it may very well be used by the Troika – the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – as an instrument for expelling Greece...

Nobody knows what it means yet, but the no vote is the only one that at least gives some hope.

The paper cited, 9 Myths about the Greek Crisis, is available here.

By Stavros Mavroudeas* (Guest blogger)For six months, after its January 2015 election victory, the SYRIZA government began negotiations with the EU. In these negotiations SYRIZA was confronted with the stubborn and increasing intransigence of EU and its companion institutions (the ECB and the IMF). SYRIZA very soon accepted the logic and the structure of the troika program; that is the Economic Adjustment Program for Greece popularly called the Memorandum. It simply tried to modify it by...

Mark Weisbrot on why Greeks should vote no."Well, I would go for a no-vote, because you have to look at who is responsible for this mess, who is responsible for six years of depression, who is responsible for the bank closing right now. It’s because the European Central Bank decided last Sunday to limit the amount of emergency liquidity assistance, so that the banks wouldn’t have enough money to open. And they did this very deliberately, I think, to intimidate the voters into...

An interview with Esteban Pérez Caldentey in Tan Cerca/Tan Lejos, a radio program produced at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. First half in English, second one in Spanish.

Jean François Ponsot, Jonathan Marie and @NakedKeynesI'm in France for a talk at the Université de Paris XIII, invited by Jonathan Marie and Dany Lang. The Greek crisis looms large in everybody's minds. I gave a talk based on two papers, one published here, and the other (specifically on the Spanish crisis) just finished, which will soon come as a working paper. But I discussed to a great extent the debate between Sergio Cesaratto and Marc Lavoie on the nature of the European crisis, that is,...

By Joseph StiglitzThe rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics. Of course, the economics behind the program that the “troika” (the European Commission, the...

Celso Furtado (1920-2004)The International Journal of Political Economy, edited by Mario Seccareccia, had a special issue on Celso Furtado. There were articles by Ricardo Bielschowsky, James Cypher, and Rosa Freire d'Aguiar, Furtado's widow, among others. Below Bielschowsky's paper on Furtado's opus magnus, titled "Furtado's Economic Growth of Brazil: Masterpiece of Structuralism."From the abstract:This survey article reviews Celso Furtado’s most famous book and argues that he...

By James K. GalbraithThe International Monetary Fund's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, recently asked a simple and important question: "How much of an adjustment has to be made by Greece, how much has to be made by its official creditors?" But that raises two more questions: How much of an adjustment has Greece already made? And have its creditors given anything at all? In May 2010, the Greek government agreed to a fiscal adjustment equal to 16 percent of GDP from 2010 to 2013. As a...