Tag Archive

The G20 Feigned Optimism: Is it Justified?

By alex.foti

We don’t think so. Most of the pledges are verbal, and the extra $500bn given to the IMF,  in addition of reviving a hated institution worldwide, are peanuts compared with the trillions needed to keep the world economy afloat. As Keith Hart says, this is a crisis where both capitalists and governments are losing big. [...]

EuroMayDay: “Maastricht Rule Straitjacket on Social Progress”

By alex.foti

Labour ministers from the Group of Eight wealthy nations and six other major economies are to gather in Rome on Sunday for talks on the “human dimension” of the financial crisis sweeping the planet.
The three-day “Group of 14″ meeting will bring together the G8 leading industrial powers with the emerging giants China, India and Brazil [...]

We, the Movement, Predicted the Great Recession

By alex.foti

Once beaten for stating the obvious, our time has come
Katharine Ainger, Thursday 26 March 2009
Ten years ago, the anticapitalist movement predicted this recession. Now it must envisage an alternative global future
It was 1999 and the summer of corporate love. Many pundits – now talking of “bad apples” and applauding bailouts – were predicting the [...]

Krugman Confirms GR.info’s Thesis that EU will suffer worse slump due to monetarist orthodoxy

By alex.foti

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 16, 2009
I’m concerned about Europe. Actually, I’m concerned about the whole world — there are no safe havens from the global economic storm. But the situation in Europe worries me even more than the situation in America.
Just to be clear, I’m not about to rehash the standard American complaint that Europe’s [...]

State Socialism for the Rich, Market Liberalism for the Poor

By alex.foti

This is what’s happening in the EU and the US. Where’s the left? Socialists sold out to Blair and the Third Way a decade ago. With the exception of Zapatero (actually fairly orthodox on the economic front, although now he has fired Almunia), there hasn’t been anything new on the rosé side. As for reds, [...]

Middle-Class Europe Made Precarious by Crisis

By alex.foti

AGITATION AS MIDDLE-CLASS EUROPE STRUGGLES TO COPE
By John Thornhill
Economics is convulsing European politics. Governments have fallen in Iceland and Latvia; strikes or protests have erupted in Greece, Ireland, France, Germany, Britain, Lithuania, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Financial turmoil has shaken even the continent’s furthest-flung outposts: the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe has been ravaged by violent [...]

MayDay, MayDay, the Great Recession Deepens!

By alex.foti

Japan down 12.7%  minus one less drunk minister (Nakagawa), Germany -8.5%, Italy -7%, eurozone and sterlingzone both down 5.9%, France almost minus five, Obamerica -3.8%
This was annualization for 009 of last quarter of 008. but the Great Recession is gathering momentum and will end up be even worse than that. Germany and Italy will be [...]

Trillions for Bankers, Zero for People: Europe Protests

By alex.foti

THE PARIS DECLARATION FOR MOBILIZING ON THE CRISIS
We won’t pay for your crisis!
More than 150 representatives of trade unions, farmers’ movements, global justice groups, environmental groups, development groups, migrants’ groups, faith-based groups, women’s groups, the have-not movements, student and youth groups, and anti-poverty groups from all over Europe gathered on the 10th and 11th [...]