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Press Release
Greece Faces Inevitable Default and Should Refuse Further Austerity Measures, Levy Scholar Says
Blog
Farce Turns Into Tragedy
C. J. Polychroniou has a new one-pager that starts off by noting the asymmetries in the approaches taken by governments in the US and Europe to the 2007-08 crash and its aftermath: featuring bold public interventions to save the banking and financial systems but relatively limited measures for the millions of unemployed. He then turns [...]
Why Is Greece Cutting Private-sector Wages?
Foreign Policy, February 13, 2012. © 2012 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved. There’s something puzzling about the austerity bill embraced by the Greek parliament overnight. The package includes measures such as government layoffs that seem logical for a country flirting with default. But news reports are also discussing private-sector wage cuts. How […]
Blog
Employment in Greece
From a peak of 4.5 million workers in 2008, Greece has already lost 500,000 jobs. Our first chart shows that the country is already in its worst condition since the beginning of the century in terms of the share of the working age population who have a job (our projections are based on the last [...]
Greece’s Grim Choice: Deep Budget Cuts or Default
AP, February 12, 2012. Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. WASHINGTON (AP) — Why would Greece accept more pain when unemployment is at 21 percent, the economy is enduring its fifth year of recession and rioters are hurling gasoline bombs in the streets of Athens? Because the alternative might be worse. Greek […]
Papadimitriou Discusses the Latest on Greece
Bloomberg Radio, February 10, 2012. © 2012 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved. Dimitri Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, discusses whether or not Greece will hold together. Papadimitriou talks with Kathleen Hays and Vonnie Quinn on Bloomberg Radio’s “The Hays Advantage.” Full audio of the interview is available here.
Blog
A Job Creation Strategy for Greece
No matter what happens on Sunday, when the Greek parliament is scheduled to vote on the latest bailout package, on Monday Greece will wake up in the grip of an employment crisis (20 percent unemployment, with a near 40 percent youth unemployment rate). In the Huffington Post Dimitri Papadimitriou tells us what we can (and [...]
Greece’s Groundhog Day
Marketplace, February 10, 2012. © Marketplace from American Public Media As riots in Athens grew violent today, Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos took a “take it or leave it” stance with his cabinet ministers. Either get behind the new austerity measures or quit. Six of them chose to leave. On Sunday the Greek parliament […]
Blog
The Sources of Personal Income Since 1947
(Click to enlarge.) See the blue line in the upper half of the figure above? That line shows the portion of personal income made up of wage and salary disbursements, as a percentage of total personal income. (As the figure notes, I’ve subtracted social insurance contributions such as Social Security taxes. Also, employer contributions to [...]
Greece: How to Slow the Nosedive
The Huffington Post, February 9, 2012. Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. All rights reserved. The latest negotiations between Greece and its lenders have ended, at least momentarily. Athens has agreed to endure ever-more painful pension, spending, and wage cuts, with monthly minimum salaries dropping 20 percent. The powerful leaders of ”the troika”—the International Monetary Fund, […]
Blog
State AGs Cave to Banksters
(cross posted at EconoMonitor) Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has long been skeptical of the negotiations by the State Attorneys General and the banksters over the foreclosure frauds (see here). And while I had held out some hope that California and New York would either refuse to join, or would insist on good terms, today’s [...]
Blog
Pessimism on Greek Bailout Deal (If You Need Some)
To provide a little more perspective on the news of the just-announced Greek bailout agreement, I point you to this CNN Money piece from yesterday in which Dimitri Papadimitriou notes how abysmal the underlying economic growth trends remain (Greek employment depends a lot on shipping, which is faring poorly) and reminds us that the package, [...]