Tag Archives: The Observer

REVIEW: Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo A recent YouGov survey confirmed that economists are the least trusted professionals in the UK today. Brexit is only the latest contributor to the public’s understandable rejection of a profession that has either failed spectacularly to raise the alarm over impending crises or have provided...

Την περασμένη εβδομάδα οι τίτλοι και τα πρωτοσέλιδα των ΜΜΕ «γιόρτασαν το τέλος της οικονομικής διάσωσης της Ελλάδας, ακόμη και τη λήξη της λιτότητας, ενώ παρουσίασαν την οκταετή παρέμβαση της Ευρώπης στην Ελλάδα ως πρότυπο συνετής ευρωπαϊκής αλληλεγγύης στο “μαύρο πρόβατό” της, μια περίπτωση “αυστηρής αγάπης” που φέρεται να λειτούργησε. Όμως μία πιο προσεκτική ματιά αποκαλύπτει μία διαφορετική πραγματικότητα....

Over the past week, the world’s media have been proclaiming the successful completion of the Greek financial rescue programmemounted in 2010 by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Headlines celebrated the end of Greece’s bailout, even the termination of austerity. Buoyant reports from ground zero of the eurozone crisis portrayed Europe’s eight-year long Greek intervention as a paradigm of...

Every so often humanity manages genuinely to surprise itself. Events to which we had previously assigned zero probability push us into what the ancient Greeks referred to as aporia: a state of intense bafflement urgently demanding a new model of the world we live in. The Crash of 2008 was such a moment. Suddenly, the world ceased to make sense in terms of what, a few weeks before, passed as conventional wisdom –...