This past week, the now hydra-like Greek debt crisis reared yet another one of its re-growing heads. Anti-austerity protests returned to Athens as Greek ministers attempted to acquiesce to the demands of European Union leaders who thought that the problem had already been dealt with. The continuation of the Greek recession, now entering historic periods of length and severity at five years and a 16 percent decrease from pre-recession GDP, should...
...d vigilantes — many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic. Pundits here urged Obama to “do a Cameron;” Cameron and Osborne were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere. Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.” Let’s take a look at the UK now: from Why Is the U.K. Double-Dipping?, The Atlantic Magazine After recovering at a...
...to the government or to a charitable organization. Why was she not seeking help from a more sustainable source? The answer, I discovered, is a complicated one. Far more than bank CEOs or holders of bad mortgages, the economic recession has dealt a severe blow to the poor of New York City. In addition to federal aid program cuts, the non-profit sector – a traditional safety net for those who are most economically vulnerable – is being forced to cu...
...loss of faith. This movement is more than an indictment of individuals or institutions, but rather it is symptomatic of the city’s failure to maintain a balanced, innovative, and competitive economy. What became clear in the recession is that New York’s economic model, with a disproportionately large share of income stemming from the maintenance and growth of the financial and service sectors, is unsustainable. In the aftermath of the 2008 finan...
...od. Even though Ma had the advantage of demonstrating the successes of his policies, he also carried the burden of explaining and justifying the slow growth in the nation’s economy that had been greatly impacted by the global recession. Although both political platforms were strikingly similar on domestic issues, closer examination reveals differing opinions on national identity and cross-strait economic policy. They both referred to employment o...
...America. Poverty has always been a complicated, challenging issue, but changing social and political attitudes towards poverty in the wake of the 1996 welfare reform compromise, coupled with the disruptions posed by the Great Recession, have converged to shut out talk of poverty from the national discourse. Figures released by the US Census Bureau in late 2012 have shown the astounding extent to which this epidemic has gained ground in America ov...
...e conservative economic policies. Many lawmakers began to characterize wages and benefits for public-sector workers as a drain on the economy. In particular, many state governments, struggling to make money in the wake of the recession, began to push new legislation to limit the power of labor unions. This was especially evident in Senate Bill 5, a heavily-publicized Ohio state referendum. Supporters of the bill purported that it would save the s...
...rm fiscal path.” Projections from the GAO report show that the net interest on debt is likely to reach 5 to 12 percent of U.S. GDP by 2040. This research also affirms that although stimulus spending in response to the current recession has influenced this potentially disastrous trajectory, the main determinants of the unsustainable path are entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The GAO states that “absent changes t...
...ncellor of the Exchequer. His credibility, therefore, was staked on the fact that he had created ten years of economic stability, a claim which the economic crisis of 2008-9, in which the U.K. suffered its longest and deepest recession since 1945, was to put in a different light. Thus, lacking both credibility and an electoral mandate, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brown faced a number of early attempts to oust him from within his own Cabinet,...
..., pundits are looking fondly at the days when they could bite their nails over the collapse of individual countries as the euro itself appears to be in mortal danger. Many are predicting that massive defaults, disintegration, recession, and austerity will cause economic havoc in Europe if dramatic action is not undertaken quickly. Growing fears of catastrophe have caused a run on beleaguered banks and governments, raising Spanish and Italian bond...
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