Austerity is destroying the free part of the Greek economy, leaving government more dysfunctional than ever. Worse news: it will need yet another bailout... Seasoned economic observers remain shocked by recent events. Greece will soon need another bailout. That’s not remotely surprising. What shocks is that there remains some semblance of an economy to bail out after 6 years of depression. Greece is bust, t ...

Financial 'investors' have already made a killing on Greek debt, but this activity isn't inevitable – such vultures can be challenged 'Vulture funds honed their skills against developing countries.' Photograph: Craig Fujii/Associated Press Not everyone is unhappy about the desperate straits of the Greek economy. A group of financial "investors" made a killing on Greek debt on Tuesday – purely by being the m ...

Paul Mason Economics editor, for bbc.co.uk The language and the time zone changes but, from Turkey and Bulgaria to Brazil, the symbolism of protest is increasingly the same. The Guy Fawkes masks, the erection of tent camps, the gas masks and helmets improvised in response to the use of tear gas as a means of collective punishment. The handwritten signs - scrawled in defiance of the state's power and the uni ...

On Tuesday night, the Greek government blocked the transmission of the Greek public broadcaster (ERT). The decision was taken earlier that day by the government in a totally undemocratic way. There was no prior discussion about it in the parliament. PM Samaras' "success story" has not convinced anyone, so he decided to take one more "successful" step towards the Troika's demand for 4.000 layoffs of civil se ...

 Staff continue broadcasts on web Screens went blank hours on Tuesday after a government announcement that it was closing national broadcaster ERT for an unspecified period of time and lay off over 2,600 workers, presenting it as a cost-cutting drive demanded by the troika A 'no signal ' sign appears on the public ERT, NET and ERT3 channels, after the government suspended state television and radio broadcas ...

You can find the recent report from IMF on Greece here: Link [pdf] Some read the recent IMF report on Greece as a mea culpa for its mistakes in the Greek bailout. We see it differently. You can say sorry for an unintended mistake, a miscalculation. The case we have here is not an accident. IMF’s inhumane and otherwise ineffective policies are not, as IMF asserts, the result of a methodological error, simply ...

AMSTERDAM — International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde’s appearance at the University of Amsterdam has been interrupted by chanting students. IMF Managing Director Lagarde was speaking to students about the European debt crisis when organized students mixed in with the audience began interrupting pre-approved questions, apparently with criticism of the fund’s policies. Security guards grabbed severa ...

Though Margaret Thatcher is no longer among the living, her ideology lives on. That ideology – known today as neoliberalism, “free market fundamentalism” in a phrase coined by George Soros – is strikingly unique. Apart from religious beliefs, is there any example of an ideology that has been so thoroughly disproven yet maintains an aura of respectability? The basic premise of neoliberalism – that “free mark ...

UPDATED! Critical Thinking and Freedom of Speech is not one of the goals of SEFA With the occasion of having Mr. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, participating in the “Room for Discussion” event, the Student Association for Economics and Business (SEFA) of University of Amsterdam avoided any opportunity to expose tomorrow's economists to critical and diverse thinking. Mr Draghi gave a r ...

Over the last 1.5 years, the VU University Amsterdam has been embroiled in a battle against severe budgetary cuts. The university board (consisting of three members, one of whom is the former CEO of a port company and another, the former CEO of a bank), has launched a reorganization program that includes budget cuts of €33 million. This reorganization will result in 500-600 layoffs (a reduction of 350 full- ...