Creating a ‘third world’ within EU periphery

From January 2010 until mid-2011, there has been a great deal of analysis and commentary from different ideological perspectives devoted to the structural weakness of the EU owing to the debtor (periphery) nations that are dragging down the stronger northern countries of the eurozone. This is not only because of how the EU handled the [...]

Lessons not learned from global recession

History shows that deeply entrenched institutional interests prevent society from making progress and avoiding mistakes of the past that range from economic to military crises. In that respect, George Santayana was right that history repeats itself ( “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”). The lesson from the Vietnam War was [...]

Spain: austerity, default or revolt

In the past year, I have been asked what options do Greece, Portugal and Spain have other than following austerity measures under the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB), and EU. The answer depends on what kind of society do citizens want for themselves, and to what degree are they able to prevail [...]

The con-game of neo-liberalism

Behind the theory of neo-liberalism rests a con game by all of its apologists who profit from it at the expense of workers and the middle classes throughout the world. Based on Adam Smith’s WEALTH OF THE NATIONS (1776), liberal theory of economics rests on the political philosophy of John Locke, and the assumption that [...]

IMF-DSK scandal – Dominique Strauss-Khan

After he was arrested in New York on sexual assault charges on 15 May 2011, DSK has been the subject of tremendous media coverage in the past 24hours. His story seems to have captured peoples’ imagination more than any scandal in which Silvio Berlusconi has been involved. My take on the DSK scandal is that [...]

Capital accumulation & poverty

If wealthy nations are unable to accumulate capital by extending credit to debtor nations for civilian and military products and services during a contracting economic cycle at the level that they could during the expansionary cycle, how does the process of capital accumulation work during contracting economic cycles? In short, if accumulation does not take [...]

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