Yes, we’re nice people, and yes we have been sapped of our energy. But the main reasons we’re not protesting are deeper and must be targeted directly. Photo by Dimitris Michalakis.  Last week, two commentaries appeared in The Guardian — one by David Graeberand the other by Costas Lapavitsas and Alex Politaki — basically asking the same question: given that we’re under such relentless assault by the rich and ...

“Shock Doctrine” Revisited: The Authoritarian Guise of the European Union in the Crisis REAL WORLD ECONOMICS Friday, 16 MAY 2014, 20.30 to 22.30 hours Plantage Doklaan 8-12 in Amsterdam From 19.00 hours onwards, there will be great vegan food cooked by the ‘Kollektief Rampenplan' and books for sale from Boekhandel Rooie Rat After almost seven years of global economic crisis, the crisis’ disruptive impact co ...

The economic impact of the Greek crisis has been well publicised. A recession that began in 2008 has led to GDP contracting by a quarter, while unemployment has risen above 27 percent. Greece’s fiscal consolidation effort has also received much attention. A general government deficit of 15.6 percent in 2009 was transformed into a small surplus in 2013 – one of the sharpest adjustments the world has ever see ...

Since the 1st of January 2014 the presidency of EU is held by the Greek prime-minister Antonis Samaras. In Greece, this was “celebrated” from the one side with a feast where the European leaders were invited and from the other side with arrests and teargas against the protesters who took to the streets of Athens. ...

For the last few years after the crisis I couldn’t get my head around the fact that so many Dutch people knew so little about Greece, and yet they felt the need to express their views in a very loud and provocative way, and pass judgment. The first few months of the crisis in Greece, Dutch tabloids like De Telegraph, came out with front page reports from Greece and published photos of Greeks enjoying their ...

C.J. Polychroniou and Anastasia Giamali: Neoliberal ideology claims that the government is a problem, society does not exist and individuals are responsible for their own fate. Yet, big business and the rich rely, as ever, on state intervention to maintain their hold over the economy and to enjoy a bigger slice of the economic pie. Is neoliberalism a myth, merely an ideological construct? Noam Chomsky: The ...

Non-mainstream economists are all-too aware of the failure of mainstream economists to anticipate, let alone avoid, the Global Financial Crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.  The mainstream profession is also failing to fix the problem, and is actually making it worse. ...

Worried by the current crisis affecting the Eurozone and many other parts of the world, we also sometimes feel disempowered by our lack of deeper understanding of the mechanisms that have triggered such devastating developments. Some time back, Allegra started to explore the financial world (here),  the current transformations of Universities (here and here) as well as the power and failures of bureaucracie ...

I have just attended the 10th annual Historical Materialism conference in London where I presented a paper (among hundreds of others) and heard the contributions of many others.  But more on that in my next post. ...

Plunging Greek Wages Crater Q2 Disposable Income By 9.3%, Government Borrowing Rises To Record by zerohedge Can someone please explain this whole "Grecovery" concept to use because neither we, nor apparently the people of Greece which are not only unemployed and broke, but have negative savings, and collapsing wages, social benefits and disposable income, seem able to understand it. Here is the latest absol ...