11. October 2015 | The Group of Thirty, a mixed group of international commercial bankers and central bankers, has just released a report on central banking. The report is again presented as if it was representing the opinion of the group as a whole, including Mario Draghi. This proves that the new guidelines for communication of the members of the Executive Board of the ECB are nothing but window dressing.
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Why Mario Draghi will not be able to stay in the Group of Thirty
Early in 2013 the EU-Ombudsman ruled on a complaint of Corporate Europe Observatory and found that ECB-President Mario Draghi can legitimately be part of the Group of Thirty, a mixed group of international bankers and central bankers. My research shows that the reasons he gave at the time are not valid any more. Draghi will not be able stay in this highly problematic group, nor will ECB-Top-Supervisor Julie Dickson be able to continue to “contribute her experience”.
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“Syriza did not expect to stand alone in the negotiations” Interview with Athanase Contagyris
Anasthase Contagyris is a French and Greek economist living in Athens. He is Co-Founder of Attac-Greece, CEO of Dialogos Ltd, an Athens Startup coaching and export facilitation consultancy he founded in 19887. He is a member of the Truth Committee on Public Debt of the Greek Parliament, which recently issued a preliminary report. We met in Frankfurt. He is well conneted, though not a member, to Syriza.
Members of the Shadow ECB Council evenly split over assessment of a possible Greek exit
At the meeting of the Shadow ECB Council on 27 May 2015 it became clear that the spectre of Grexit is polarizing not only policy makers but also economists. About half the members of the Shadow ECB Council would regard an exit of Greece from the currency union a very bad and dangerous outcome. Roughly the other half would consider it well manageable or even desirable.
Members of the Shadow ECB Council evenly split over assessment of a possible Greek exit
At the meeting of the Shadow ECB Council on 27 May 2015 it became clear that the spectre of Grexit is polarizing not only policy makers but also economists. About half the members of the Shadow ECB Council would regard an exit of Greece from the currency union a very bad and dangerous outcome. Roughly the other half would consider it well manageable or even desirable.
Economics as Superstructure
Presentation for the seminar “Economics and Power” on 23 March 2015, House of Lords, London: Ladies and Gentlemen, To pay tribute to the Marxist jargon, in which Lord Skidelsky has phrased the title of my subject, I would like to start with a quote from Karl Marx: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. … The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, … the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.” In my own words, that means that not all economic ideas are created equal.
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Anti-Greek Media Propaganda Will Come Back to Haunt Germany – A Dire Warning From 2011
In June 2011, Spiegel Online conducted and published a remarkable interview with Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl is one of Germany’s most renowned economic historians, teaching at the London School of Economics. Already for years ago, he warned that Germany, being the worst debt offender in history, would ultimately regret it, if it insisted on behaving like the tough taskmaster of Athens and the rest of Europe. What Ritschl predicted is