1 Ikus http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30500.

2 Ingelesez: “… unless things change rather dramatically in Greece, Syriza may actually end up only undermining progressive agendas in Europe as they self-destruct under the iron fist of the Troika.”

3 Ingelesez: “The demise of the left in Europe didn’t begin with the onset of the GFC. One might actually posit that the GFC was the culmination of a steady move to the right by political parties everywhere, which allowed ridiculous labour and financial market deregulation to occur and fiscal policy to be eschewed.”

4 Ingelesez: “Notermans says (p.1):

The social democratic vision of society envisaged a world in which human beings control their circumstances rather than being controlled by them. One essential characteristic of such a society would be that it guaranteed its members a decent livelihood. Rather than large sections of the population being condemned to inactivity by recurring economic crisis, all those able to take up employment should have the possibility of doing so. Those who temporarily or permanently lack the ability to provide for themselves should be able to count on the solidarity of society to provide them with the means for a decent livelihood. The inability to work should not be a condemnation to live a marginalized existence.”

5 Ikus The Irish Times article (March 20, 2015), EU mandarin Declan Costello faces Greek wrath over ‘ultimatums’ letter. Halaber, ikus Paul Mason kazetariaren artikulua: Don’t pass new anti-poverty law, commission tells Greece.

6 Ingelesez: “In my 2008 book with Joan Muysken – Full Employment abandoned – the Post World War II consensus in terms of what we called the Full Employment Framework. We juxtaposed it with the neo-liberal replacement, which we termed the Full Employability Framework.

The Great Depression taught us that, in the absence of government intervention, capitalist economies are prone to lengthy periods of unemployment, the Second World War experience proved that full employment could be maintained with appropriate use of budget deficits.”

7 Ingelesez: “The answer is that the framework did not break down because it failed but was usurped by a growing resurgence of ideas that had been simmering for all the Post World War II period.

The corporate sector, the monied class, were continually struggling to shift the pendulum back in their favour as full employment and welfare arrangements clearly reduced income and wealth inequality and gave workers some power in the labour market.”

8 Ingelesez: “Capital funded academics to produce a plethora of material which alleged to show how dangerous trade unions were or how wage rises would kill growth etc. Nothing much has changed except during the full employment period with growing real wages (in line with productivity) it was hard to mount a case that disaster was about to strike.”

9 Ingelesez: “All that changed when the Arabs retaliated against Zionist aggression and pushed up the oil prices in 1973.

The outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East in October 1973 (the 1973 Arab Israeli War) was accompanied by the oil embargo imposed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

A few days later, on 16 October, the Arab nations increased the price of oil by 17 per cent and indicated they would cut production by 25 per cent as part of a leveraged retaliation against the US President’s decision to provide arms to Israel.

The price of oil rose by around three times within eight months.

That political event was exploited by the growing literature from conservative economists about the dangers of the welfare state and full employment – they were arguing that it would result in accelerating inflation.

The economic models themselves are spurious (and nonsensical) but it was the serendipitous outbreak of inflation associated with the oil crisis that allowed them to dupe governments (and the voters) into believing that the inflation was the direct result of the full employment and wage equity.”

10 Ingelesez: “Monetarism (championed by Milton Friedman and his colleagues) displaced Keynesian thinking as the dominant economic policy paradigm.”

11 Ingelesez: “The reality was the problem was (and remains) that the coincidence of unemployment and rising inflation in the 1970s was not a problem of excess demand. The fact is that that the price instability came from the supply side as the OPEC sheiks drove up oil prices.

The policy response to cut aggregate demand and thus increase unemployment was exactly the wrong response. The Monetarists exploited that policy error and claimed that it demonstrated a categorical failure of the Keynesian approach.

Any Keynesian remedies proposed to reduce unemployment were met with derision from the bulk of the profession who had embraced Monetarism and its policy implications. They claimed that the economy would always tend back to a given natural rate of unemployment (which was associated with stable inflation), no matter what had happened to the economy over the course of time.”

12 Ikus Jacobin aldizkaria (March 23, 2015), Time Isn’t on Our Side.

13 Ingelesez: “Syriza politicians are engaging in “media spin” to proclaim a “victory” after the February 20 negotiations with the Eurogroup.”

14 Ingelesez: “But even without going into a detailed analysis of the commitments undertaken by the Greek government while signing the agreement, it’s clear that it didn’t take long before reality refuted the main points of the preceding argument … it became clear that the government’s hands were tied … As a consequence, during the first month of the left government, a period of unprecedented legislative inaction prevailed, a vivid reflection of the long-prepared “iron cage” in which the European Union (EU) had imposed on the undisciplined Greeks … In essence, this means that the redistributive measures that could provide genuine relief to the working class and other popular strata, and would allow Syriza to stabilize its social alliances, are deferred indefinitely.”

15 Mitchell-en hitzak: “...the obsession by the educated left in Europe with the concept of ‘a grand Europe’ as an expression of modernity and sophistication.

They cannot see that the way they have acceded to the creation of this ‘Europe’ is the antithesis of sophistication. It has created increased poverty, mass unemployment and spawned a revival of populist fascist-type political movements.”