Category Archives: Europe

Don Quijones: Catalonia Exit Threat Moves Spain Toward Political Breakdown

How the success of Catalonia separatists is threatening the two-party system in Spain.

John Helmer: M17 – Why the Investigation Will Never End, the Evidence Never Seen

John Helmer describes the latest twists and turns in investigation into the downing of MH17.

Greece: No Lessons Learned

Greece, which has undertaken the most severe austerity, has experienced the deepest economic contraction. But the policy quackery continues.

CalSTRS, Maryland Fund Private Equity Players Seeking Profits in the Refugee Crisis

Private-equity-backed providers undercut charities in providing refugee services. It’s not hard to imagine how the results are coming in.

Chris Hedges and Leo Panitch: We are All Greeks Now

Leo Panitch and Chris Hedges discuss how nature of imperialism today is financial power.

John Helmer: MH17 – Dutch Prepare Missile Attack on Moscow

The Dutch Government has decided to launch a missile attack on Moscow in October. By suppressing all evidence obtained from the bodies of victims of the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17, officials of the Dutch Safety Board and associated Dutch military officers, police and prosecutors are preparing to release a report on the crash with a gaping hole in its veracity.

Breaking the Greek Debt Impasse: A Solution for Greece

Greece needs debt restructuring. On this, a growing chorus of voices is agreed (Manasse 2015, Taylor 2015). Even the IMF (2015) now acknowledges that Greece’s debt is unsustainable. Restructuring is required, it now insists, for the workability of the third programme between the country and ‘the institutions’ that is currently being finalised.

Questus Global Capital Market, Scam Stock: an Update

Updating the bizarre story of Questus Global Capital Market, a New Brunswick-incorporated, GXG-listed, New-Zealand-FSP-brokered company of monstrously fraudulent aspect that had apparently ensnared a Malaysian billionaire, various US-based small businesses and retail investors, and a couple of princes from the royal families of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.

Ilargi: The Real Refugee Crisis Is In The Future

Perhaps Angela Merkel thought we didn’t yet know how full of it she is. Perhaps that’s why she said yesterday with regards to Europe’s refugee crisis that “Everything must move quickly,” only to call an EU meeting a full two weeks later. That announcement show one thing: Merkel doesn’t see this as a crisis. If she did, she would have called for such a meeting a long time ago, and not some point far into the future.

German Wage Repression: Getting to the Roots of the Eurozone Crisis

How Germany’s wage repression, a war against its own workers, has been exported to the rest of the Eurozone.

Greece’s Missing Drivers of Growth

This post mines an issue we’ve discussed repeatedly, that the heavy dose of “reforms” imposed on Greece succeeded in lowering wage costs without providing the expected boost in exports.

On Syriza as a Party: Tragic Flaws, or Tragic Errors?

By Lambert Strether of Corrente. The YouTube below, titled “The Battle Against Austerity: Lessons From Greece,” was recorded at a two-person panel discussion sponsored by Canada’s Socialist Project. The speakers are Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University and editor of the Socialist Register, and Richard Fidler, a life long […]

A Pragmatic Approach to External Debt: The Write-Down of Germany’s Debts in 1953

Greece’s crisis has invited comparisons to the 1953 London Debt Agreement, which ended a long period of German default on external debt. Unfortunately for Greece, the motivations driving the 1953 agreement are nearly entirely absent today.