Wolfgang Schäuble may heave left the finance ministry but his policy for turning the eurozone into an iron cage of austerity, that is the very antithesis of a democratic federation, lives on. What is remarkable about Dr Schäuble’s tenure was how he invested heavily in maintaining the fragility of the monetary union, rather than eradicating it in order to render the eurozone macro-economically sustainable and...
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In this BBC World at One program dedicated to the Crash of 2007-8, I try, in the space of two and a half minutes, to explain why those momentous events, ten years ago, changed the world in a manner that it no longer makes sense in terms common prior to 2007. Of why I claim that 2007/8 was to capitalism what 1991 was to socialism...
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In a recent article entitled “Varoufakis and the 2015 debt talks – behind closed doors”, published on the English language site of Kathimerini, Yannis Paleologos is putting forward an innovative new criticism of my 2015 negotiating stance regarding Greece’s public debt. His criticism’s first leg is standard troika-speak, insisting that by pressing for a deep re-structuring of Greece’s public debt I brought “the...
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ATHENS — The recent elections in France and Britain have confirmed the political establishment’s simultaneous vulnerability and vigor in the face of a nationalist insurgency. This contradiction is the motif of the moment — personified by the new French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose résumé made him a darling of the elites but who rode a wave of anti-establishment enthusiasm to power. A similar paradox is...
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ATHENS – Since the summer of 2015, Greece has (mostly) dropped out of the news, but not because its economic condition has stabilized. A prison is not newsworthy as long as the inmates suffer quietly. It is only when they stage a rebellion, and the authorities crack down, that the satellite trucks appear. The last rebellion occurred in the first half of 2015, when Greek voters rejected piling new loans upon...
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LONDON – “I don’t care about what it will cost. We took our country back!” This is the proud message heard throughout England since the Brexit referendum last June. And it is a demand that is resonating across the continent. Until recently, any proposal to “save” Europe was regarded sympathetically, albeit with skepticism about its feasibility. Today, the skepticism is about whether Europe is worth saving. The...
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Heterodox
