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Mind a 28 tagállam vezetője összeül. Merkel nem túl optimista, Juncker már a görög euróvég forgatókönyvéről beszélt.

Brüssel hat der Regierung in Athen eine letzte Frist gesetzt: Bis Freitagmorgen 8 Uhr 30 MEZ müssen der Europäischen Kommission neue Reformvorschläge…

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What I want to offer you, is a simple definition of globalization. I said, a simple definition. But what I mean by that is, in fact, two things. Globalization is two things. It’s the extension, intensification, and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. And at the same time, it’s a big buzzword. A big buzzword of political speech that’s used by business leaders, by political leaders, by protestors, in different ways but nevertheless, used as a buzzword to make politically charged arguments about how the world is shaping up and where it should be headed.

Now, to understand globalization we have to understand both these definitions at the same time and look carefully at how they interact with one another. So let’s look first at globalization in the first sense. Globalization as the extension, intensification and acceleration of consequential worldwide interconnections. What are those interconnections? Well, all together they form ties, global ties, or interdependencies as some social scientists call them. These include global trade ties, the global ties of workers and consumers, the ties of global finance and money flows, the ties of global law-making through trade agreements and human rights law-making, the ties of governments to one another, but also the ties that markets increasingly have around and through government action, including the ties markets have on our governance of our personal relation, the ties also of our spaces, between spaces, between territories, and ties that therefore also change the meaning of territory and the ties of global health.

These are all some of the key interdependencies that we’ll be looking at in the upcoming articles. But as we do so, I want to emphasize that it’s very important that we keep the second definition of globalization in our minds at the same time. This is  globalization with a capital G or big G globalization, as I refer to it in some of the upcoming articles.

Now, looking at globalization with a capital G means paying close attention to how it does discursive work, how it makes political arguments in a simple sound bite. The protestors in Seattle, back in 1999, who were protesting the World Trade Organization often carried banners that said, no globalization without representation. And they, in a sense, were using globalization as a, a political politically charged term of discourse when they were doing so. Of course, they were harkening back to the old  arguments of the American revolutionaries of no taxation without representation. But they were doing so to make an argument that global market ties were creating a kind of market like globalization that came without any kind of political representation for ordinary people. So they were contesting a certain standardized vision of globalization, a packaged market vision of globalization. And so they were using the term in the big G kind of way. But as they did so, I think they did another thing, whether they meant to or not.

They basically said with that slogan no globalization without representation, that globalization is always an act, when it’s used as a term, it’s always an act of representation. It involves representational politics. And this is something I want to address both today and in the upcoming lectures.

So why the need to distinguish between little g globalization, the term for global interdependency, and big G globalization, the term for the buzzword in political speak? I think there are at least three good reasons for doing this. First of all, I want to avoid gesture or tendency that’s found in a lot of other introductions to globalization. Introductions by other academics who offer great studies of the interdependencies, but who often think that we can put the politically charged arguments to one side.

When they do this, they go through what I like to call the Globalization 3 Step. They say first of all, that there’s too much exaggeration by what they call hyper-globalists. The hyper-globalists who exaggerate globalization, who make too much a big deal out of big G globalization, and confuse everybody by making exaggerations and making politically charged arguments. They don’t want to be like that. But secondly, the second move of their 3 step, they also don’t want to be like, what they call the skeptic. The skeptics who are so serious, they think everything is just continuing the way it always has done historically. You know, nothing much has changed, the governments of the world still run their countries, borders still exist. Globalization is all hog wash and too much exaggeration, say the skeptics.

Well, the advocates of the middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism think that the skeptics have got it wrong too. That things have changed, that the interdependencies are consequential and they have really changed the world. They’ve changed our everyday lives. They think, therefore, that we can chart a sober and unbiased analytical middle way between hyper-globalism and skepticism. And in some respects, I want to follow them in, in, that middle way myself. But, I don’t want to put big G Globalization to one side. I actually am interested in why some people want to be skeptics and why other people want to be hyper-globalists.

I want to look at what arguments those people are making and what they want to achieve politically by making them. So introducing this term, big G Globalization, allows us to do that. It allows us to look at the impact of the discourse on the reorganization of
society around the world. And there are a number of scholars to have done this. Manfred Steger, for example, in his book Globalisms is an example of someone who’s interested in how discourses about globalization make a difference in the world.

So introducing this doubled up definition of globalization not only allows us to look at how big G discourses of globalization have shaped the world, but it also allows up to look at how the world and global dynamics, global interdependencies shape discourses
about globalization.

The relationships go both ways and this in turn helps us understand how academic approaches to globalization have themselves been shaped by the history of global development. The modern social sciences and the humanities the fields of study that give us the, the richest picture of globalization, at least in the way it’s going to be discussed in my upcoming lectures, are all disciplines that have emerged out of a particular kind of global history.

This has enabled them to see the world in particular ways, but it’s also limited what they can see, particularly in our own contemporary moment of globalization. And that’s because many of them were founded in the 19th century and the 20th century, when the nation state was the major object of focus of study, the major analytically counting center for all kinds of statistics. The word statistics goes back to the nation-state, state-istics.

I want to explain why it’s important by turning to the old, very globally traveled fable of the elephant and the blind villagers. Now in the traditional telling of this story, the villagers can’t work out what the elephant is. They feel the side and thinks it’s a wall. They feel the tusk and thinks it’s a spear. They feel the tail and they feel, they think it’s a rope. That’s the traditional idea.

In some religious retellings of this story, it’s as if the elephant is a God that ordinary mortals cannot understand. And to some extent, that’s a good metaphor for big G Globalization, because it’s often invoked as a kind of God about which we cannot fully understand, that has all these grand effects that we can’t fully come to terms with, but that’s not my main point here. I’m interested more in, in how the social sciences are a little bit like the the blind villagers and that they all need to go beyond the limitations of their own particular perspectives by fashioning an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization, the elephant as a whole. To make my point a little bit clearer, let’s think about some social sciences. Economics, for example, sees something of a tusk or a spear of globalization in following the money flows of global finance and of global economic integration. But it doesn’t always put those money flows and economic data into a political context. Political science does focus on the political context but because of its foundation in the modern 20th century tends to look at nation states as the most important political context and doesn’t always look at the transnational state making that has arisen because of economic ties across borders. Geographers my own discipline, tend to focus on what globalization looks like on the ground and the way it’s changed the ground, but in ways that don’t always fully examine the history of globalization. Historians, and, and scholars of English literature, or other world literatures, tend to focus on national history or national culture in ways that don’t fully examine the interconnections of culture and history globally.

Now in all these disciplines you can find examples of scholars, many examples, in fact, of scholars who reach beyond the national template and try to fashion an interdisciplinary perspective on globalization.

 

The post Defining Globalization. appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

A tegnapi bejelentés szerint (07.06.) Namwali Serpell a díj 16 éves történetében első zambiai íróként nyerte meg az afrikai írók támogatására létrehozott Caine-díjat, a Sack (Zsák) címet viselő alig 7 oldalas novellájáért (amelyet itt egyébként bárki elolvashat), amelyben két, egy beteg és egy őt ápoló férfi történetét ismerhetjük meg, akik egyrészt ősidők óta barátok, másrészt viszont vetélytársak is egy nő miatt, akiről később kiderül, hogy már elhunyt és csak egy kisfiút hagyott maga után, akiről nem tudni, hogy melyik férfi gyermeke.

A Caine-díjat még 2000-ben alapították, hogy itt mérethessenek meg a legjobb afrikai rövid, angol nyelvű novellák és általában minden év júliusában történik meg a győztes bejelentése egy egész héten át tartó programsorozat utolsó állomásaként, amelyen egyébként sajtóesemények, felolvasások és író-olvasó találkozók is vannak. Az elmúlt években a nigériai írók eléggé domináltak a győztesek között, de például nyert díjat egy zimbabwei gettóról szóló, “Hitting Budapest” című novellájával NoViolet Bulawayo is. Serpell egyébként nem Zambiában él, 1989-ben kivándorolt az Egyesült Államokba, ahol a mai napig angolt tanít a kalifornai Berkeley egyetemén és nyilatkozata szerint a díjjal járó 10 ezer fontot szét fogja osztani a legjobb ötbe bejutott másik négy író, a két nigériai, Segun Afolabi (ő 2005-ben már nyert egyszer) és Elnathan John valamint a két dél-afrikai, F.T. Kola és Masande Ntshanga között, hiszen ahogy ő utalt rá, “az írás sosem lehet verseny”.

Érdekes volt egyébként olvasni, hogy Serpell számára a novella megírásakor nagy inspirációt jelentett a legendás japán horrorrendező, Takashi Miike Meghallgatás című filmje, amelyben szintén egy zsák játssza az egyik főszerepet. Az RFI-nek adott interjújában az írónő azt is kiemelte, hogy rendkívül meglepett volt már amiatt is, hogy a legjobb ötbe beválogatták, hiszen a Zsák egy különös, szürreális történet és amikor az interjú készítője azt feszegette, hogy most akkor megnyílik-e számára a nagy karrier lehetősége, hiszen ezzel a díjjal az elismert írók közé emelkedett – szimpatikus módon azt nyilatkozta, hogy számára csak az olvasók elismerése számít és pont ez volt az oka annak is, hogy a díjjal járó pénzt fel fogja osztani írótársai között. Ez a poszt igazából nem volt több, mint egy hír bemutatása és Namwali Serpell népszerűsítésére tett kísérlet, hiszen a lényeg az, hogy a kedves Olvasók kicsit megismerjék az afrikai irodalmat, legalább egy nem túl sok időt igénylő apró novellán keresztül. Szóval rajta hát olvasni!

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4 ember kedveli ezt a posztot.Tetszett az írás.Tetszett az írás.

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Completing three years overseeing the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) Karin Landgren reflected at IPI on the progress Liberia has made toward peace and stability, as well as the critical challenges facing the country.

Those years have been consequential ones for Liberia and the UN. During her tenure, the peacekeeping force saw significant drawdown, there was an outbreak of Ebola, and elections were held. The reduction of peacekeepers continues at present, as UNMIL’s mandate expires in a year’s time.

Emerging from war in 2003, Liberia signaled a new direction with the historic election of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf three years later. As her term comes to an end in 2017, Presidential hopefuls will need to address reconciliation, security risks, and development.

“Liberia has made significant progress, including in the last three years,” she said. At her arrival, UNMIL had a peacekeeping force of 15,000, which was then reduced to 8,000, and, eventually, its military component was just 3,200.

Drawing upon that experience, Ms. Landgren speculated about the future of the country, as the UN works toward fulfilling its obligation to transfer security responsibilities to national authorities by June 30, 2016, in accordance with Resolution 2190 of 2014.

“Certainly the coming transition from UN Peacekeeping has to be managed very carefully,” she recognized. “UNMIL remains a reassuring presence. There is a real fear of a retreating UN.”

UNMIL’s security responsibilities have been different from other peacekeeping missions, particularly post-conflict missions. Overall, UNMIL’s role has not been to serve as a buffer between chaos and stability. Tasks are more of a supporting nature, such as guarding the country’s two main prisons. Approximately half a dozen tasks managed directly by UNMIL are to be taken over by Liberia in what she called “a staggered fashion” in the coming months.

The Liberian conflict is at a later stage, she said, and the peacekeeping mission serves to shore up national actors ahead of the full transition. “UNMIL has not been the first-line protection in Liberia, with the exception of protection of civilians, where required,” she said. “We have been the back up to national actors. So there has been a steady transition taking place throughout these years.”

This is not the only manner in which Liberia is unique among post-conflict countries. “Particularly for a post-conflict context, this is an environment largely free of political repression, of political prisoners, of extra judicial killings,” she emphasized.

Among the successes she highlighted were attracting $16-19 billion in foreign direct investment since 2005, and conducting a mid-term senatorial election last December, a considerable feat for any country emerging from conflict, let alone one at the center of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, along with neighbors Guinea and Sierra Leone.

“Ebola has also strengthened something in the Liberian national fabric,” Ms. Landgren said, describing Liberia’s “resilience.” Its citizens were even able to draw something positive from the public health emergency, she said.

“Ebola, at its best, called forth extraordinary examples of togetherness and community spirit, and this should not be lost.” She continued, “This is part of what makes decentralization so vital, drawing more of the country into its own governance.”

Noting the criticism the international response to the Ebola outbreak had generated, Ms. Landgren posed a few questions. “How does the world respond quickly to health emergencies?” she asked. “How do you get in quickly to communities, who are the front lines, who need to change their behaviors, often behaviors that are sensitive, religiously driven, dear to them, whether its burial practices or others that we’re talking about, and where there is this mistrust of central government; how do you get right into that inner circle of trust and get the right messages across in a reliable way?”

The Ebola crisis did take its toll on the frequently troubled border with Côte d’Ivoire. Before the outbreak, progress was being made, but unfortunately, that dialogue had to be “put on ice,” she explained. The border between the two countries was closed on the Ivorian side, which was unaffected during the Ebola Crisis.

With impacts ranging from loss of trade to the suspension of refugee repatriation, the border, which remains closed, is “something to watch,” she said. She predicts this will be a key issue in the leadership battles in both countries, with Côte d’Ivoire heading to the polls in October, and Liberia holding Presidential elections in 2017.

By Ms. Landgren’s evaluation, there is much to be celebrated in development of Liberian institutions, as a result of the mission’s support. “We’ve seen positive changes in terms of recruitment, training, capability,” she said. “By the security sector, it is primarily the police.”

However, discussing the national roadmap for the security transition, she highlighted three key areas in need of improvement in the country: resources, management, and public trust.

The lack of resources, in particular for the police force, was made abundantly clear to Ms. Landgren, when she “traveled around saying goodbye.” In the provinces, she said, “they have no functioning vehicles at all.” She said the police force is “struggling to establish a meaningful presence outside the capital.”

A second area where the security sector needs improvement is in management. It will be a challenge to “incentivize good administration and governance within the security sector,” she said, “when the pull of parallel ways of doing business is so powerful.”

The third area she anticipates as a challenge in the security transition will be building public trust for Liberia’s national institutions. Noting that “Governance in Liberia wasn’t strong before the war,” Ms. Landgren explained that transferring the trust developed by UNMIL to national institutions would not be easy because when the UN leaves, the Liberian government will not simply be “building up something that has existed in the past.”

In that connection, Ms. Landgren reminded the audience that Liberia remains a divided society, and a history of social exclusion has created cleavages between citizens and government, as the Security Council recognized.

In her consultations around the country, Ms. Landgren found that “more than one Liberian has told me, bitterly, that every relationship is transactional,” she said, of their opinion of their government. “These are lessons that start early. School children are asked to give cash or give sex for grades.”

These early interactions with national authority figures have real consequences for public trust, she said. “What we’re seeing and hearing is really the shadow system is stronger than the official system. The work they do in school is irrelevant to the outcome. And that their role models can abuse them with impunity.”

One way to address these cleavages will be “developing human capital, which could help level this playing field more,” she said. However, while aspects of the government remain personalized to the benefit of a “small, dominant elite,” rather than systems-based, as she described it, implementing such a policy “has not had high priority.”

For these reasons, economic planning is especially politicized in the country, and without providing economic opportunity for all Liberians, she said, the country is susceptible to relapse into conflict. “We don’t necessarily see the question of economic structure as part and parcel of peace consolidation, and I believe that it is – it must be.”

With its extractives-driven economy, Liberia has consistently experienced high growth rates, but the benefits have not trickled down. Ms. Landgren sympathized with a member of the audience who contended, “Liberia may be experiencing growth, but for whom? Who does it benefit?”

“The expression ‘growth without development’ was coined in the 1970s about Liberia, so to some degree this risks being déjà vu all over again,” she responded. “That is why this area of economic structure is directly linked to stability.”

She painted a picture of the kind of development the country is lacking. “Social services are very weak, as we also saw during Ebola. Growth has been the top priority,” she said. “Investment plans have centered on infrastructure and energy. Justice and security have also had relatively low priority.”

She concluded her answer by again giving voice to the many Liberians she has spoken with as SRSG. “There is discontent, there is resentment, when I exit the SRSG bubble and talk to Liberians about how they understand reconciliation,” she said.

“One common demand has often been ‘feeling part of economic development.’ People want the road to come to their village, they want access to market, and they want jobs,” she explained, citing the responses she received upon asking what would make citizens feel reconciled.

She emphasized that Liberia has done remarkably well for a country emerging from war; but its citizens, especially the youth, remain a risk factor without opportunities from jobs to education readily available. “A country with Liberia’s prospects should be able to do that. This is the wealthiest post-conflict country I’ve ever worked in,” she said. As a result, “it has enormous potential.”

“Liberia itself has defined how to arrive at a shared sense of nationhood,” she concluded. She praised plans for reconciliation already in progress, including the Reconciliation Roadmap of 2012, but lamented that the “activities in the roadmap are largely, if not entirely, funded by the partners.”

Ms. Landgren stressed that ownership of the national reconciliation project is what will enable its success. “What I would hope to see, is more of a push from Liberian society itself, to take hold of these ‘unity’ ‘reconciliation’ ‘accountability’ and ‘justice’ initiatives, and run with them,” she said. “We’re seeing some of that, which is encouraging.”

IPI Senior Adviser for External Relations Warren Hoge moderated the conversation.

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Griechenland steht erneut im Mittelpunkt eines Sondergipfeltreffens der Staats- und Regierungschefs der Eurozone. Zwei Tage nach dem umstrittenen…

A WITTMANN Robottechnikai Kft. 474 millió forint összköltségű projektje során Magyarországon egyedülálló, fröccsöntőgép-gyártás elindításához szükséges csarnoképítést és gépbeszerzést valósított meg.

A mosonmagyaróvári cég a „Telephelyfejlesztés és ipartelepítés a területi kohézióért” című konstrukció keretében 142,27 millió forint vissza nem térítendő uniós támogatást nyert el a fejlesztéshez.

A WITTMANN Robottechnikai Kft. 1997 óta a WITTMANN Csoport robotjainak és temperáló berendezéseinek fontos gyártóbázisa. A mosonmagyaróvári cég lineáris robotokat gyárt, melyekkel a világon piacvezetőnek számít.

A vállalatcsoport ezen kívül átfolyás-szabályozókat, temperálókat, darálókat, granulátum-szárítókat, központi anyagellátó rendszereket készít, de szállít komplex műanyagipari berendezéseket, sőt teljesen automatizált gépsorokat is. Termékeiket a műanyagipar hasznosítja az autó-, a csomagolóanyag gyártásban, elektronikában, a gyógyszer- és élelmiszeriparban. A Wittmann-Battenfeld cégcsoport a világon egyedüliként képes komplett megoldásokat kínálni a műanyagfröccsöntés területén.

A Társaság üzleti filozófiájában hangsúlyos szerepe van az innováció mellett a minőségnek, az értékesítésnek és a szervizháttérnek is. A vevőik kiszolgálása tekintetében az említett komplexitásra törekszenek, arra, hogy a műanyagfröccsöntés területén minden igényt kielégítsenek.

Jelen fejlesztéssel Mosonmagyaróváron indult el a magyarországi fröccsöntőgép-gyártás. A beruházás első számú indoka a komplex fröccsöntő technológiák iránti növekvő igény volt a műanyagipari gyártók részéről, másrészt az elégtelen, lassú reakció a gép-gyártók oldaláról. Mindez egy egyre növekvő, jól felismert piaci rés kialakulásához vezetett.

A projekt keretében a Wittmann Robottechnikai Kft. egy új, korszerű, közel 2.500 m2 alapterületű gyártócsarnokot épített, továbbá gépparkját fejlesztette élhajlító gép, híddaru, valamint targoncák beszerzésével. A gyártáshoz szükséges további gépeket pályázaton kívül vásárolták meg.

A Nyugat-dunántúli Operatív Program pályázati kiírásán 142 270 139 forintos támogatást elnyert, 474 233 796 forint összköltségvetésű fejlesztés 2014. március 3-án indult és 2015. június 30-án zárult.

Public anger over austerity in Greece. Via: Flickr by how will I ever

There seems to be a widespread belief that Greece is in the trouble it is in today because it will not implement the policies that Europe has demanded of it. While it has neglected some reforms, it has adhered to Europe’s key austerity demands more faithfully than any other country in Europe. It appears, however, that this very policy, far from constructing the anticipated sound foundation, has driven the Greek economy into the ground. That is why Greece does not want to follow that path any more.

A Structure without Institutions

You could argue, I suppose, that the roots of the Greek crisis go back to the failure of traditional Keynesian economics to explain the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Stagnation and inflation were not supposed to happen at the same time. Thus, many academic economists began to move away from Keynes and his assumptions. Governments, too, were becoming less enthusiastic about Keynesian fiscal policies, in particular, which were rarely nimble enough to deal with the relatively quick fluctuations of the routine business cycle. As a result, there were fewer active efforts to manipulate the economy to avoid recessions and inflation and toward a greater reliance on markets to regulate themselves.

When the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was built within the European Union (EU) in the 1990s, it followed this model. As several countries moved toward the use of a single currency (eventually called the euro), a European Central Bank (ECB) was built, but its functions were limited to fighting inflation. No common fiscal institutions were created whatsoever. Instead, member countries retained their own sovereign fiscal institutions and policies. They were instructed to keep their budget deficits within three percent of GDP and national debt within 60 percent of GDP, but these restrictions have been routinely violated by member countries without triggering sanctions.

Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, was particularly fond of the new arrangement (indeed, it had insisted on it), given its own focus on balanced budgets and inflation. Germany had been scarred by the hyperinflation that it suffered in the early 1920s. (In November 1923, a loaf of bread cost 200,000,000,000 marks.) One of its highest priorities was to prevent any of the less disciplined countries of Europe from imposing inflation on it through the new monetary union. That, however, has not prevented Germany from violating its own restrictions on deficit and debt.

A System That Feeds Imbalances

Most EU members transitioned to the euro as the common currency from 1999 to 2002. Greece’s acceptance into the EMU was delayed until 2001 because of its unacceptable deficits and inflation rate, and many Europeans were skeptical of its prospects even then. Once the “eurozone” was born, it created the impression that lenders were dealing with a single politico-economic entity, that buying euro-denominated bonds from the Greek treasury was the equivalent of buying euro-denominated bonds from the German treasury. Money began flowing freely out of core European economies into Greece and other peripheral economies.*

In Greece, interest rates fell, inflation grew and relative productivity plummeted. Current accounts were soon out of balance in both core and periphery. The periphery ran large deficits, while the core ran correspondingly large surpluses, as the peripheral economies used the money to buy things from the core economies. The core economies were, in effect, growing at the expense of the weaker peripheral economies, which financed their deficits by borrowing even more from German, French, and other European banks.

Then, in 2010, the euro crisis hit, the Greek bubble burst and demand collapsed. The unemployment rate in Greece peaked at 28 percent, and has been holding steady at 25 percent. Youth unemployment approaches 50 percent.

A Remedy Worse than the Disease

Despite the appearance of a single European politico-economic system, when the crisis hit, Greece was not able to rely on overall European fiscal resources, but on its own meager capacity, immediately generating a fiscal crisis at the national level. When the Germans and other members of the European core looked at Greece, they saw the profligate and sometimes fraudulent borrowing accompanied by corruption, widespread tax evasion, an unaffordable pension system and other fiscal problems.** These problems were real and needed to be addressed, although arguably the middle of an economic crisis was not the best time for some of them. Yet the leaders of the core economies failed to recognize their own contribution to the problem, or even raise the issue of addressing their own current-account surpluses, which continued to siphon money out of Greece.

Because Greece was a member of the EMU, certain policy options available to other countries in crisis were not available to it. For instance, it could not improve its current-account balance by devaluing its currency relative to its major trade partners because they were using the same currency. (As a consequence of the single currency, German companies that export outside the eurozone benefit every time the Greek crisis drives the value of the euro lower.) Greece could not expand its money supply in an effort to lower interest rates and boost domestic demand because it had no control over monetary policy. Monetary policy was decided at the continental level, primarily in ways consistent with Germany’s preferences, which are the opposite of Greece’s needs.

While Greece’s fiscal problems required reducing its budget deficits, a logical accompaniment to that would have been for Germany to expand its own economy and buy more things from Greece. That would have given a boost to demand in the Greek economy and helped reduce the imbalance in their mutual current accounts. Instead, European leaders offered Greece a bailout consisting of even more loans, the proceeds of which were dedicated not to easing a Greek fiscal transition but almost entirely to paying back European banks for older loans. In return for this, Greece was expected to eliminate its budget deficits through austerity — by increasing taxes and reducing government spending and pensions, laying off workers and privatizing state-owned assets.

The austerity approach has proved to be counterproductive. That may not be true in every situation, but it is true in the conditions prevailing since the global economic crisis of 2008, a situation in which consumer demand and corporate investment collapsed and interest rates are stuck near zero. The problem of insufficient demand cannot be remedied by depressing demand even further, which is the consequence of reducing government spending. Even if other reforms were to succeed in improving productivity, companies will have no reason to take advantage of that productivity if there are no consumers. The IMF’s own research department, after studying the impact of Europe’s austerity policies in the aftermath of 2008, concluded that for every $1.00 cut from government spending, economic activity was reduced by roughly $1.30. Thus, austerity has depressed economies even further, and no country in has pursued austerity more than Greece.

The Greek bailout of 2010 had to be followed by another in 2012. That one involved writing off 75 percent of Greece’s debts and the transfer of most of the remaining debt from private banks to public European institutions (shielding the core economy banks in the event of a Greek default). It appears that yet another bailout is required now.

From 2007 to 2014, Greece reduced government spending by more than 20 percent, far more than any other country in the EU, including countries held up to Greece as models. In the same period, Greek GDP has contracted by 20 percent, and per capita consumption by even more. (Keep in mind that 20 percent of GDP is much more than 20 percent of the budget, even in Greece.) Greece’s debt burden (that is, its debt-to-GDP ratio) has worsened under the recovery plan not only because of the additional loans but because its GDP is smaller. Whereas the Troika supervising Greece’s economic recovery program (the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF) predicted in 2010 that their program would turn the Greek economy around in 2011 and have it approaching precrisis levels by now, the Greek GDP still remains 20 percent below that figure. While Greece showed signs of growth in 2014 (0.8 percent) for the first time since 2007, it slipped back into recession in 2015.

Greece’s deficit reduction (first bar) has been substantially greater than any other European country’s. (Graph: European Commission, via Paul Krugman’s blog, Conscience of a Liberal, www.nytimes.com)

The Syriza government that came into office in Athens in January sought to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s recovery program. The latest offer from the Troika, which officially expired on June 30, would have required Greece to increase austerity further, raising the country’s primary budget surplus (i.e., revenues minus expenditures excluding interest payments on outstanding debt) in stages from 1 percent of GDP this year to 3.5 percent of GDP starting in 2018. Although Greece did achieve a primary budget surplus in 2014, it is back in deficit in 2015.

All this comes at the same time that the IMF is acknowledging that Greece will never be able to pay its debts in full even if it follows the Troika’s demands to the letter. Some observers see this as a European conspiracy to keep Greece down, yet that does not seem right either. European leaders appear to believe in the healing effects of austerity; the entire continent has followed the austerity path, albeit not as extremely as Greece. They do not want to bend the rules for Greece in large part because they fear that other countries will then demand to be released from the general austerity prescription. Yet, according to some economists, austerity is the reason that the entire European continent is barely keeping its collective economic nose above water — and has repeatedly threatened to drive the global economy back into recession — regardless of the repeated proclamations of success coming out of Brussels. In 2009, unemployment was 9.5 percent in both the United States and the eurozone; in 2015, unemployment is 5.4 percent in the United States and 11.1 percent in the eurozone.***

Now, of course, the United States also has states with different economic trends and different levels of development, just like Europe, but because the United States considers itself a single country, it handles fiscal issues differently. Florida did not have to deal with its real estate crisis on its own in 2008; if it had, it would have suffered bankruptcy as well. Federal funds flow freely from state to state. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has calculated that Mississippi, for example, receives $500 per capita more in federal transfers than it pays in federal taxes, whereas Delaware pays $13,000 per capita more in federal taxes then it receives in federal transfers. This goes on perpetually. Since we all live in the same country, however, we do not see it as a crisis, do not call it a bailout, do not demand that Mississippi pay the money back, and do not exact punishment for the state’s failure to cover its own expenses. It is simply government functioning.

Since 2010 the ongoing euro crisis has prompted the EU to strengthen some of its economic and financial institutions. Still, Jean Monnet’s dream of a United States of Europe clearly is still a long way off.

 

 

*In the case of Greece, the government borrowed large amounts. In Spain and Ireland, large amounts flowed into the private sector, fueling large real estate bubbles. When the crisis hit, both of those countries suffered despite the fact that their government budgets were actually in surplus at the time. Greece is really the only country where government debt played a substantial role in the crisis, which suggests at least the possibility that the Greek crisis could have happened even if the government had not borrowed so much.

**The Greek pension system manages to be a significant fiscal burden (about 18% of GDP, half of which comes out of the national budget) without being especially generous on an individual level. For nearly half the recipients it is below the poverty line, and for many households (especially these days) it is the only source of income. Unfortunately, this makes it extremely difficult to forge a compromise.

***The United States has probably focused too much on deficit reduction, slowing its own recovery, but not as much as Europe.

Le nombre de diplômés de l’enseignement supérieur est en constante augmentation, année après année. En parallèle, on constate un allongement de la durée des études, avec le master qui s’impose de plus en plus comme la norme. Pour autant, le chômage et le déclassement des jeunes se maintiennent à des niveaux historiquement hauts.

Cet article Julien Gonzalez : Enseignement supérieur : les limites de la « mastérisation » est apparu en premier sur Fondapol.

Recently, the Foreign Ministry of Israel released a cartoon mocking (Western) reporters, portraying them as clueless and ignorant.

The cartoon shows a blonde American reporter missing all of the obvious atrocities happening around him as he reports live from Gaza.

“We are here in the center of Gaza, and as you can see, people here are trying to live quiet lives. There are no terrorists here, just ordinary people,” he says.

In the meantime, a militant launches a missile in the background, and a Hamas official carries off an LGBT activist with a bag over his head, presumably for execution.

The cartoon was in English, clearly intended for a foreign audience.

It was released to preempt the publication of a U.N. Human Rights Council report critical of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Then, Israel released another cartoon this week. It was tweeted out by account of the Prime Minister of Israel (as opposed to Bibi’s personal account) and shared through their Facebook account. In fact, at the time of this writing, @IsraelPM has it as a pinned tweet and the Prime Minister of Israel‘s Facebook account has it as a pinned post.

The cartoon presents the case that Iran is just like ISIS:

“The Islamic State of Iran.
Like ISIS.
Just much bigger.”

Again, the cartoon is in English.

Neither cartoon got much of a warm reception online, or from the press. If Israel was hoping to change hearts and minds, they need look no further than the YouTube comments of the most recent video to see they fell short. It has twice the number of thumbs down as thumbs up, and that was the polite response. The comments are particularly nasty.

Many have compared both videos to be of the “South Park style.” Neither swayed anyone who didn’t already agree with their point, and both gave ample room for mockery, if not outright anger.

If nothing else, whoever was tasked with creating this videos should be reprimanded for keeping the comments section open on YouTube.

Follow me on Twitter @jlemonsk.

Retrouvez ici les photos de l’évènement « Valeurs d’islam, république et citoyenneté ».
La Fondation pour l’innovation politique a organisé une matinée exceptionnelle de débats le dimanche 14 juin, de 9h à 13h, autour du thème : « Valeurs d’islam, république et citoyenneté ».

Cet article « Valeurs d’islam, république et citoyenneté » – Photos de l’événement est apparu en premier sur Fondapol.

The threat of nuclear war was diminished greatly in the early 1980s after the SALT II treaty between the United States and Soviet Union created an agreed upon reduction of nuclear arms. The emergence of MIRVs, missiles that could release multiple warheads on various targets using one rocket as its base, was considered to be a significant risk to both sides. MIRVs and similar systems were limited and eventually banned by the SALT I and SALT II treaties. However, in 2013, the Russian government announced it was going to replace their late generation SS-18 Satan missiles with a new system. The new system, named Sarmat, will begin testing in October 2015. This new ICBM will likely be the newest and most advanced system to be put into service in a generation.

The re-establishment of Russian and NATO military units across the borders is ramping up while diplomacy in Ukraine continues to be usurped by active battles in Eastern Ukraine. NATO’s commitment to place heavy tank and artillery divisions in countries bordering Russia has given Russia the narrative and catalyst to increase its military presence on its own border. Russia’s 2015 May Day parade showed several new ground systems being introduced into their arsenal based on the T-14 Armata tank hull and chassis. Air defense systems similar to that of the BUK-M1 were also on display, such as the related BUK-M2, TOR-M2E and Pansir-S1. Russia’s public demonstrations of new equipment used to be the way Western powers saw how the Soviet army’s capabilities changed from year to year. It seems like this tradition will continue with the “Armata” parade

Mobile nuclear missile systems like the SS-25 Sickle have been the mainstay of Russian nuclear forces for the last few years. The May Day parade featured the SS-27 system, an updated SS-25, along with the new Armata-based systems. Another recent announcement that Russia will start to upgrade more TU-160 strategic bombers after years of stalled production also confirmed a return to the Cold War status quo that was diminished at the end of the 1980s.

The return to large and complex weapons systems might require a shift in U.S. policy in order to compete with new Russian equipment. If the United States and NATO are unable to balance Russian forces on the border, diplomacy may only come after deterrence neutralizes any future “hot” conflict in Eastern Europe.

Általános : Július 1-jétől Luxemburg, az egyik legkisebb és legrégebbi uniós tagállam tölti be az EU Tanács elnöki posztját. Szerdán a plenáris ülésen az EP-képviselők megvitatják a főbb problémákat, amelyekkel az országnak szembe kell néznie a következő hat hónapban. A vitán szó lesz a görög válságról, a menekültügy problémájáról, illetve a decemberi párizsi klímakonferencia kérdéseiről is. Az elnökség átvétele előtt luxemburgi EP-képviselőket kérdeztünk arról, hogy mit várnak az elkövetkezendő időszaktól.

Forrás : © Európai Unió, 2015 - EP

Les enjeux des prochains mois en termes de lutte contre le changement climatique mais aussi d’aide au développement sont cruciaux. L’un ne peut aller sans l’autre : convaincre tous les pays d’agir contre le changement climatique n’est possible qu’avec une aide aux pays les plus pauvres, tandis que l’adaptation et l’atténuation sont elles-mêmes des facteurs de développement.

Le 17 juin, la FLF Surcouf, engagée en opérations au sein de la CTF 150 dans des opérations de sécurité maritime en océan Indien, s’est entraînée avec la frégate nippone Ikazuchi. Cette dernière embarque le commandement de la Combined Task force 151, force jumelle de la CTF150, engagée dans des missions de lutte contre la piraterie, dans la même zone de responsabilité que le Surcouf.