Tag Archives: Greece

By William K. Black April 17, 2016     Bloomington, MN The old joke, that conveys a critical truth, is the poster that says “The daily floggings will continue until morale improves around here.”  The troika misses the irony in the poster, for it thinks that the answer to the eurozone nightmare problems caused by austerity is more austerity.  The latest example is three IMF stories that ran contemporaneously.  The IMF, again, lowered global growth forecasts.  Two, the IMF is calling for...

On October 30th 2015, I gave a keynote speech at Birmingham University's Finance Forum on the implications of Grexit and Brexit for financial stability. I've now written this up as a paper.I start by outlining the purpose of financial stability. Since the 2007-8 financial crisis, “financial stability” has been all the rage. We must prevent another crisis: we must solve the problems that make our financial system “unstable”.  But what exactly do we mean by “financial stability”? Most people...

My Forbes post on the threat to democracy in the EU touched a nerve. Well, several nerves, actually. Some people regarded my invocation of the Prague Spring as insulting to the people who suffered under Soviet oppression: others objected to my comparison of the benevolent EU with the evil USSR: and a few complained that I had presented the Syriza government as "martyrs", when they are nothing of the kind. And lots of Portuguese called me out for misrepresenting how their parliamentary...

In-depth analysis on Credit Writedowns Pro. Editor’s note: This was originally published by Absolute Return Partners in late August. So we are a little late in releasing it. Apologies. It is still good reading. The Absolute Return Letter, August/September 2015: Doodles from an eventful summer “There is something deeply troubling when the unthinkable threatens to become routine.” Bank for International Settlements Incidents of the summer 2015 This month’s Absolute Return Letter is a...

From the new issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE). By Marica Frangakis from the Nicos Poulantzas Institute, Athens, Greece. From the abstract:Greece is the country in which the eurozone's public debt crisis began in late 2009. The policy response of the EU elites was to provide financial assistance on condition that a strict austerity-cum-deregulation policy is applied under the watchful guidance of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF (the so-called...

Everyone has been so transfixed by Yanis Varoufakis's "Plan B" revelations that his defence of the ECB's Mario Draghi passed unnoticed. Here it is, transcribed from the Lamont tape by Peter Spiegel at the FT:Mario Draghi has handled himself as well as he could, and he tried to stay out of this mire, the political mire, impressively. I have always held him in high regard. I hold him in even higher regard now, having experienced him over the last six months. Having said that, the European...

Guest post by Sigrún DavídsdóttirThe word “trust” has been mentioned time and again in reports on the tortuous negotiations on Greece. One reason is the persistent deceit in reporting on debt and deficit statistics, including lying about an off market swap with Goldman Sachs: not a one-off deceit but a political interference through concerted action among several public institutions for more then ten years.As late as in the July 12 Euro Summit statement "safeguarding of the full legal...

In my last post, I pointed out that Greece's current depression is by no means the worst since World War II, as is often stated, and that the US's Great Depression was not the worst depression in history either. For reference, I'm putting up Tony Tassell's chart again.I'm frankly appalled by the comments on that post. The arguments used to justify the prevailing views amount to the following.1. The other countries in the list aren't rich Western countries, so they don't count.Eh???2....

We're used to hearing that the current Greek depression is the longest and deepest since World War II, aren't we? And that the worst depression in history was the US's Great Depression?Via the FT's Tony Tassell comes this chart:Looks like the fall of the Iron Curtain, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War did far more damage. Not to mention the numerous wars and crises in Africa. The current Greek depression just about makes it on to the bottom of this chart, and the other...

In-depth analysis on Credit Writedowns Pro. By Frances Coppola The banks are re-opening, though just for transactions, so people can pay their bills and their taxes, pay in cheques, that kind of thing. The cash withdrawal limit has been changed to a weekly limit of 420 EUR per card per person, enabling households to manage their cash flow better. But the capital controls remain: money cannot leave the country without the agreement of the Finance Ministry. And the banks remain short of...