Tag Archives: European New Deal

Back in 1991, a left-wing friend expressed his frustration that “really existing socialism” was crumbling, with exaltations of how it had propelled the Soviet Union from the plough to Sputnik in a decade. I remember replying, under his pained and disapproving gaze: “So, what? No unsustainable system can be, ultimately, sustained.” Now that globalization is also proving unsustainable, and is in retreat, its...

Listen to this insightful one hour-long discussion on democracy’s discontents in Europe and the United States between two economists who, in 2015, worked together to restore democracy in a small European country while helping its people escape debt-bondage. Here they discuss those events as well as the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) that is now taking the fight for democracy to every...

The American New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt’s first two terms combined the goals of financial stabilization, reconstruction, conservation, and employment—jobs for the jobless; public works; power systems and new industries, especially in the South; soil conservation and reforestation to battle the Dust Bowl; and a potent mix of regulations and insurance to assert public power over high finance. Europe today...

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[embedded content] [embedded content] Yanis Varoufakis  discusses how to negotiate with the EU and his proposal to introduce fiscal money with Anatole Kaletsky, Co-Chairman of Gavekal Draganomics, David Alandete, Managing Editor of El Pais, and Torsten Riecke, Handelsblatt’s international correspondent.

ATHENS – Western capitalism has few sacred cows left. It is time to question one of them: the independence of central banks from elected governments. The rationale for entrusting monetary policy fully to central banks is well understood: politicians, overly tempted during the electoral cycle to create more money, pose a threat to economic stability. While progressives have always protested that central banks can...

ATHENS – Europe is at the mercy of a common currency that not only was unnecessary for European integration, but that is actually undermining the European Union itself. So what should be done about a currency without a state to back it – or about the 19 European states without a currency that they control? The logical answer is either to dismantle the euro or to provide it with the federal state it needs. The...

Yesterday, the Eurogroup came up with another fudge, another extend-and-pretend loan tranche, for Greece. It is, as this annotated version of the Eurogroup statement explains, a further boost to Greece’s never-ending crisis. Greece’s creditors, the EU and the IMF, are refusing even to discuss Greece’s recovery, Greece’s escape from debtor’s prison. So, what should be done? DiEM25 just published the English...

Yanis Varoufakis negotiated with the EU elite over the Greek bailout, witnessed firsthand the callous mathematics used to keep the union together. Today — after OXI, after Brexit, and after Trump — he and his comrades in DiEM25 are calling for a New Deal for Europe: a plan that can stabilize the European Union and return democracy to the people. He sat down with Doug Henwood on Behind the News to discuss this...