austerity

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?: Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability by Yanis Varoufakis – review

This book is well worth reading if you're interested in how the Eurozone got into such a mess, although it ignores a very important source of financial instability - the relationship between money and energy - and it paints an overly rosy picture of the role that the US has played in the global economy over the past century. By Caroline Whyte.

From our archives: The European project – dismantling social democracy, globalising neoliberalism

This 2003 article by Andy Storey identifies and critiques the priorities of the EU - a very useful overview given the current events in Greece and the TAFTA negotiations. He writes that "in many important respects, and to a growing extent, the emperor that is the European social project has no clothes - it is time to point out this nakedness and to begin the task of rebuilding European regionalism. Such a reconstituted regional model could then also become a building block of a more humane and just global order."

The Bank-State Bargain

Banks create money out of nothing when they extend loans and then charge borrowers interest on this newly created capital. The result is an ongoing multi-billion pound/ dollar subsidy breaking the basic rules of capitalism. What is perhaps even more surprising is that there appears to be no explicit description of the 'bargain' underlying this important arrangement. By Graham Barnes.