By ALEN MATTICH   The European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund are negotiating hard among themselves about how to structure debt relief for the Greek economy. The latest reports suggest they might have come up with a temporary deal among themselves. But what the EU, ECB and IMF want won't matter unless they get the Greek government to play as well. And that's by no mean ...

The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it’s about time. Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thin ...

Argentina's record levels of employment and massive reductions in poverty have little to do with exports Mark Weisbrot guardian.co.uk One of the great myths about the Argentine economy that is repeated nearly every day is that the rapid growth of the Argentine economy during the past decade has been a "commodity export boom". For example, the New York Times reported last week: "Riding an export boom for com ...

Less than three years after the last food crisis peaked, prices—along with hunger and malnutrition—are up again. Don’t (only) blame nature. Just a few years after one major global food crisis, a new worldwide spike in agricultural commodity and food prices is generating both predictable and extraordinary fallout. The search for causes once again leads to a conjuncture of flawed policies–in trade, environmen ...

In the last decade, financiers have speculated billions of pounds in food, helping to make prices dearer and more volatile. Speculation by large investment banks is driving up food prices for the world's poorest people, tipping millions into hunger and poverty. Investment in food commodities by banks and hedge funds has risen from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) in the past five years, helping to push pric ...

Michalis Sallas is for the last 12 years in the heart of banking business. (Reuters) - He is the former economics professor behind an upstart bank that rode the Greek boom to become a publicly listed heavyweight with a loan book of over 35 billion euros. She is his devoted wife, who oversees the bank's sponsorship of museums and the arts, and advised it on corporate social responsibility. Michalis Sallas, e ...

Greece’s secret loan from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) was a costly mistake from the start. On the day the 2001 deal was struck, the government owed the bank about 600 million euros ($793 million) more than the 2.8 billion euros it borrowed, said Spyros Papanicolaou, who took over the country’s debt-management agency in 2005. By then, the price of the transaction, a derivative that disguised the loan and t ...

Nearly 86 percent of private investors have agreed to join in the debt-swap deal that will help Greece avoid an uncontrolled default. But is that good news? Many experts have their doubts. In a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, economics professor Harald Hau argues that not only will the plan put the burden on taxpayers, but it will mean an even bigger crisis to come. SPIEGEL ONLINE: Almost 86 percent of private-se ...

Neoliberal economics planned in Brussels and Berlin will push Greece into third-world working conditions. The reporting of the Greek tragedy over the last couple of years gives the impression that economics is a master science. Yet, the mainstream economists who gave Lehman Brothers a certificate of rude health just before its collapse, predicted tat by 2012 the Greek economy would start growing. The econom ...

Translated from www.grenzeloos.org One more episode of the Greek drama is about to be played in the coming 2 months. After repeated bail-outs, hair-cuts and ‘successful’ (according to the European media…) interventions of the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF, Greece is about to default. According to many economists, the default will take place on the 20th of March, the day that Greece has to ...