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What is a reform?
The current usage of the word ‘reform’ was popular with the first generation of modernisers in the Soviet Union in the late 50s and early 60s, not so much in the West at the time. Today, the word...
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Encouraging signs of polarisation
For those of us who do not mourn the time when the Troika had it all their way, the polarisation of opinion is a very encouraging sign. After the referendum in Greece, the headlines re-introduced the...
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Groundhog Day in Brussels
The first Eurogroup meeting after the referendum, that informal get-together of finance ministers, as well as today’s Eurozone summit, generated just enough fuel for the rolling coverage to go into...
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Did he say terrorists?
The worst critique from some of the less reactionary opposition to Syriza centres around style or language. For these people, the conversation doesn’t begin there, it ends there. A remark on style is...
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Le cirque est arrivé à Strasbourg
If it wasn’t bad enough for the internationalist Alexis Tsipras to see his OXI signs in the hands of some of the petty nationalists in the European parliament in Strasbourg on 8 July, he had to sit...
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What about the other 18 democracies?
Picture this. There is a union of 19 countries. One of them goes bust, so they all agree to fix it. They apply a costly cure that makes the problem worse. They try the same cure again, they make it...
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The ‘Agreement’ – annotated by Yanis Varoufakis
Originally posted on Yanis Varoufakis:The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece’s Surrender – as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with...
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The paradox of the German taxpayer
Imagine being a German taxpayer. Your government is telling you that it’s necessary to throw your money at an unsustainable debt. If you disagree, if you think that too much – not too little – of your...
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The quote of the day isn’t the story of the day
Is Paul Krugman now saying that the Greek government is incompetent? Well, not quite. What he said was quite damning of the Greek government, true, but it was even more damning of Greece’s creditors....
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Refreshing the freshness in fresh milk
Here’s a tale of fresh milk in Greece, one of the infamous structural reforms, as described by Joseph Stiglitz in this New York Times article: “Consider the case of milk. Greeks enjoy their fresh milk,...
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