Earlier this week, a boat carrying migrants fleeing Afghanistan sank in the English Channel, killing six. Earlier this month, 41 died after a ship sailing from Tunisia sank near Italy. There are many more examples of such tragedies I could point to, and, sadly, there...
We open each of my undergrad classes with a discussion of current events. In the past four years, there have been several times that students have wondered whether a war may be about to break out:...
The Iran deal is the hot topic now, but since I wrote on the subject recently in another venue, I thought I would address the Greek/Euro crisis. I can’t help but borrow a bit of Josh’s title on the...
According to the NY Times, the IMF has refused to participate in any new bailout program for Greece unless Hellas is receiving debt relief. Specifically, says the IMF, this relief must come in one...
[UPDATE: This provides more detail and context than I do. Read it instead of, or at least in addition to, my post.] Thomas Piketty has decided that because Germany was the beneficiary of debt relief in 1953 that they should extend the same privilege to Greece today: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: What a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations. Before explaining why this is both normatively and positively misguided...
In the Greek bailout episode the Greek government has been behaving much like the self-pitying Antonio from “The Merchant of Venice,” while the EU has been posing as a rather heavy-handed Shylock. Despite being aware of the damaging consequences of a Greek default and potential exit from the Eurozone, the EU seems intent of having its pound of flesh. By subjecting Greece to additional austerity provisions, it may be risking the revival of the Euro financial crisis—this time with serious geostrategic implications. For five years the Greek people have been dealing with a series of austerity...
I would like to cut through a lot of the rhetoric and discuss where we are with the Greece crisis and where we are likely to be quite soon. I will conclude with some thoughts as to why this has been an enormous failure on the part of Syriza and the intellectual left that has supported it, and it will come with a very high cost. TL;DR: Wishful thinking is no substitute for real analysis. The European North made its position on indefinite financing of the South (and East) clear before the euro came into being. In fact, that was a condition for the euro to come into being. It has not changed....
So this post is a bleg to those of you who know more about alliances than me. I am considering writing this up for an article, so I thought I would ‘crowd-source’ early comments on the basic argument. I also wonder if someone elsewhere has already suggested this idea in the vast alliance literature. So please let me know. The motivation is inductive – the deepening tension between Japan and Korea has suggested the addendum to alliance theory I am proposing here. But I wonder if others have said this before. Put briefly, I don’t think entrapment or abandonment captures the US position between...
The entire bit is good, but the really good part begins about 3:30 into this video from last Thursday's "Colbert Report."The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive"Invest in Europe, where culture, history and fun are always having a three-way."
Is this the end of the grand Eurozone experiment? I have to admit that I've had a general feeling for the past couple of months that the Germans would, in the end, cough up a bail-out package for Greece because of a sense that there is no real alternative. But, despite the fact that Angela Merkel finally appears to be asserting herself, now I'm really not sure how it will end. Rumors are swirling that Portugal and Spain will also need bailouts to meet excessive debt burdens after their debt ratings were downgraded. And, although Spain is looking more at a current liquidity problem than...