Syriza Wins in Greece: NYT and WSJ Still Get Their Re-Writes Wrong

Posted on January 26, 2015 by | 2 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 26, 2015

I wrote a column Sunday, January 25, 2015 as the Greek election results became sufficiently clear to know that Syriza was receiving a strong plurality from the voters and as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal posted on their websites the first reaction news columns. I criticized the dishonest nature of both paper’s coverage (actually non-coverage) of what austerity inflicted on the Greek people. Both of those initial columns have now been modified, so I have looked to see whether they improved their candor in their re-writes. The updated NYT column still contains this clunker.

“Syriza’s victory is a milestone for Europe. Continuing economic weakness has stirred a populist backlash from France to Spain to Italy, with more voters growing fed up with policies that require sacrifice to meet the demands of creditors but that have not delivered more jobs and prosperity.”

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Syriza Wins and the NYT and WSJ Coverage Competes for Mendacity

Posted on January 25, 2015 by | 7 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 25, 2015

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Time’s eurozone reporters, who share the same unshakable devotion to TINA and austerity as the Murdochized WSJ news staff have been thrown into a panic by Syriza’s electoral successes in Greece.

Both papers are freaked out, as are the Germans, about the potential for Greece to spark a wave of rejections of the troika’s infliction of austerity in a manner similar to how the infliction of self-destructive austerity programs pursuant to the Washington Consensus’ demands led to the “lost decade” and the democratic election of what is now over a dozen Latin American candidates running on anti-austerity platforms. The Washington Consensus was drafted and named by an economist at Pete Peterson’s International Institute. Peterson is a Wall Street billionaire whose mission is causing debt and deficit hysteria and plugging the joys of austerity and unraveling the safety nets. His greatest goal is privatizing Social Security – producing hundreds of billions in additional fees for Wall Street.

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The NYT Gives S&M Advice to the Greeks: Stand by Your Sadist

Posted on January 24, 2015 by | 8 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 24, 2015

The New York Times’ coverage of the eurozone crisis remains execrable. Sometimes, however, it is so bad that it achieves brilliant, albeit unintentional self-parody.” The latest example is a column that, for the NYT, is in the top 5% of its efforts on Europe. Even at its best (least worst) the paper cannot help itself.

The January 23, 2015 column is entitled “After an Anxiety-Filled Campaign, Greek Voters Consider a Turn to the Left.” It does admit that Greece’s economic condition is horrific.

“After five years in which the country’s economy has shrunk by 25 percent and the number of jobless has risen far beyond what its creditors ever predicted….”

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QE is Europe’s “Last Best Hope,” – If One Ignores the First, Best Hope

Posted on January 23, 2015 by | 8 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 23, 2015

It’s the curse of the commentator on commentators. I recently wrote nice things about Neil Irwin’s New York Times column about the Eurozone. On January 22, 2015, he wrote a column about the ECB’s adoption of quantitative easing (QE), that claimed it was “last, best hope” for the Eurozone. In fairness to Irwin, his column contains plenty of skepticism as to whether QE is even a poor “hope” for the Eurozone. Irwin also has the right quotation from Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB.

“Mr. Draghi acknowledged that it would take more than an open spigot of money from the central bank to get Europe’s economy on track, and that political authorities across Europe must act as well. ‘What monetary policy can do is to create the basis for growth,’ he said at a news conference in Frankfurt. ‘But for growth to pick up, you need investment. For investment, you need confidence. And for confidence, you need structural reforms.’”

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Getting Out of Our Lanes: Understanding Discrimination in the Digital Economy

Posted on January 23, 2015 by | 1 comment

By Raúl Carrillo

In the fall of 2013, on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Ohio State University Law Professor Michelle Alexander penned a brilliant essay in The Nation, entitled “Breaking My Silence¨. In the piece, Alexander, author of the groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow, urged social justice advocates to get out of our “lanes” and “do what Dr. King demanded we should: connect the dots between poverty, racism, militarism and materialism.”

In this spirit, I am writing to encourage readers to take up yet another task, one I’ve unfortunately only recently shouldered myself: to understand how digital surveillance reinforces socioeconomic hierarchies.

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The State of the Union Speech and the President’s Credibility Gap

Posted on January 21, 2015 by | 12 comments

By Robert E. Prasch
Professor of Economics
Middlebury College

Last night, President Obama gave a great speech. He almost always does. And to that ever-shrinking group of die-hards who continue to insist that somehow, and in someway, President Obama will validate the hope kindled by his 2008 presidential campaign, it was a moment of triumph. Yes, they are saying, in his heart – very deep down, perhaps – Obama does in fact share our values and concerns, etc., he just has a hard time finding ways to express it, etc.

But let’s take a different tack. Let us begin with the old adage that “talk is cheap.” The fact is that this president has had six years to demonstrate – in deeds rather than words – what exactly constitutes his priorities. Let us, as this is a website devoted to economics issues, set aside the Obama Administration’s genuinely horrific record on civil liberties (The sordid record is long, but highlights include unchecked domestic spying by the NSA; drones deployed to terrorize the citizenry of numerous foreign nations; proclaiming and defending the prerogative to unilaterally kill American citizens with ever stating charges, much less presenting evidence or seeking convictions in the courts; solely and exclusively prosecuting those brave individuals who alerted the public to the Bush Administration’s war crimes, even as he comforted or promoted those who committed the crimes, etc.). Let us focus solely on economic policy. What follows is a brief review of the low moments thus far. These are not presented in any order and is not a comprehensive list:

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Bill Black appearing on The Real News Network

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | Comments Off on Bill Black appearing on The Real News Network

NEP’s Bill Black appeared on The Real News Network (TRNN) discussing the bill that the House of Representatives passed that further weakens financial regulation. The video is below. If you wish to view the transcript at TRNN, click here.

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The BBC and the Economist Combine to Try to Defeat Syriza

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | Comments Off on The BBC and the Economist Combine to Try to Defeat Syriza

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 20, 2015

As the Greek election nears, the mainstream media is ramping up its efforts to attack Syriza. As I have often explained, the trauma caused by the Washington Consensus’ economic malpractice in inflicting austerity on Latin America led to the election of a substantial number of leaders opposed to austerity and the troika’s infliction of austerity may lead to a similar dynamic in the EU. The BBC and The Economist agree that this could occur – and it terrifies them. A January 19, 2015 BBC article, presented as news rather than opinion, is entitled “BBC Democracy Day: Europe ‘faces political earthquakes.”

The article abounds in unintentional self-parody. First, the article admits austerity is a major driver of the “political earthquakes.” For reasons that pass all understanding the BBC hired the Economist’s “Intelligence Unit” to write what any right-wing BBC columnist would have written for no additional fee. Given that the Economist is one of the entities most culpable for the economic malpractice of inflicting austerity on the eurozone the idea that it is good journalism for them to opine about their opponents is sad or laughable depending on how one responds to absurdity.

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The Politics of MMT (Strange Bedfellows)

Posted on January 20, 2015 by | 59 comments

By Jonathan Denn

There are the cut-and-dried facts, about how money actually works, which MMT succinctly explains—that those who were unaware—seem to readily grasp.

  1. The US is the issuer of currency not just currency users like households, towns, businesses and US States.
  2. If a country has a marvelous productive capacity, a free floating sovereign currency, and little to no debt denominated in foreign funds—then there is no external reason it cannot spend regardless of taxing or borrowing.
  3. The last seven US depressions were preceded by seven rare public surpluses.
  4. A public deficit is a non public surplus, which means a private surplus after taking into account what leaked overseas.
  5. A private surplus is the point of a prosperous nation, as long as it doesn’t cause hyperinflation.
  6. Banks create money, too. But since it usually has to paid back someday, those dollars are temporary.

The conclusion is that the US is the monopoly issuer of net financial assets. So, given a stable foreign trade balance the only way the private sector can grow is with increased government spending, asset appreciation (inflation), people spending out of savings, or people/businesses borrowing (temporarily) from banks.

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The Triumph of Radical Right Economics in Greece – At the Hands of “Socialists”

Posted on January 19, 2015 by | 4 comments

By William K. Black
Bloomington, MN: January 19, 2015

In my January 18, 2015 column, I explained that German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s sweetest triumph was successfully extorting George Papandreou, Greece’s Prime Minister, head of the Greek Socialist Movemnt (PASOK), and President of the Socialist International, to inflict austerity and a war on workers’ wages on the Greek people.  I quoted a passage from the Papandreou administration’s  May 3, 2010, “Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies” (the Papandreou Plan) agreeing to the European Commission’s (EC) austerity and anti-worker demands that was made part of The EC’s  Occasional Papers No. 61 “The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece” (May 2010).

In this column I explain how radically right-wing the Papandreou Plan was and the completeness with which it embraced rather than resisted the troika’s theoclassical nostrums that forced Greece, Italy, and Spain into gratuitous second Great Depressions.  In Greece’s case, the Merkel Great Depression has proven more severe and longer in duration than the Great Depression of 80 years ago.  The EC’s Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece description of the Papandreou Plan was accurate.  The Greek leaders “strongly own and support the [austerity] programme policies and objectives.”

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