Like a swan moving forward with relaxed confidence while paddling furiously beneath the surface, Syriza, the radical left coalition that could become the next government of Greece, is facing enormous challenges calmly but with intensified activity.In the palatial setting of the Greek parliament, Alexis Tsipras, the president of the radical left coalition Syriza’s parliamentary group, opens the... Read more
Greece is approaching the climax of its crisis, and its choices will influence the course of Europe for years. Although Greece represents only 2% of the European Union’s GDP, the impact of those choices will be wide.The Greek crisis is fundamentally the result of its membership of the eurozone. Greece is paying the price for a belief in the ancient fallacy that possessing “hard” money puts a... Read more
In an unassuming Athens office, just a couple of streets from the ancient Agora where democracy first announced itself to the world, sits Nasos Iliopoulos, Secretary of Neolaia Synaspismou, the youth wing of the Greek political party Synaspismos.... Read more
'The streets of Athens erupted with some of the worst rioting and political violence seen in the country in years’. ‘Rioting Greeks torched buildings and looted dozens of shops as they battled police in central Athens to protest harsh austerity measures’. These were some of the headlines of the global corporate media about last Sunday’s demonstrations in Greece, often accompanied by photos of... Read more
Negotiations to reduce Greek debt have been suspended after no agreement could be reached last week. At some point in the near future, Greece seems certain to default on its obligations. But the drama surrounding the talks in Athens, Berlin and Paris shows that there will be nothing co-operative about a Greek default. It is a ruthless contest dominated by the so-called troika: the European... Read more
Transcript of discussion. Please refer to recording for actual words Fiona Dove:... Read more
Greece is the first test case of the resilience of the European single currency at a time of crisis. It is a historically established fact that a banking crisis is followed by a steep increase in public debt, due both to the fiscal support given to the banking sector and to the fall in GDP due to the on-setting recession. Although Greece did not have a banking crisis of the magnitude of other... Read more
