Activists from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe argue that regional integration is the only viable response to the convergence of economic, climate, food and energy crises.
Despite the strong and growing resistance in Greece and other European countries to the direction of EU policy responses to the crisis, the process for this new treaty has unfolded with disquieting speed: initiated in November, an agreement was already reached by end of January among the EU25. This comes at the expense of stifling democratic debate and, indeed, shortcutting the normal consultative procedures in the treaty process through legal manoeuvres.
Susan George, Fiona Dove, Yiorgos Vassalos, Dominique Plihon, Kenneth Haar
02 Noviembre 2011
Multi-media
In a podcast debate, four activist researchers debate why the European Union is wedlocked to economic policies that will only worsen the crisis and further undermine democratic control of public budget.
Boris Kagarlitsky, Dr. Chaohua Wang, Research Scholar in Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
21 Enero 2011
Multi-media
The economic elites are turning to a neoliberal Keynesianism to save the crisis of capitalism, which is doomed to fail because it does not address its root causes.
Susan spoke at length on France Culture talking about the converging economic, social and environmental crises of globalization, and what alternatives exist to the current state of affairs. Susan's new book Their Crisis, Our Solutions has just been published in French (Leurs Crises, Nos Solutions) and Spanish (Sui Crisis, Nuestra Soluciones), and is due out in English in September.
Despite repeated democratic rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Commission pushed ahead with it via the EU Constitution via a private, technocratic and non-democratic process. Susan discussed the treaty and its implications in a workshop at the EA4 summit in Madrid, 15 May 2010.
"The banks are ours!" Public money was used to bail out the banks, and now they are lending back to the public at interest, while governments ignore the social and environmental crises that confront society. It is time to demand real solutions that will work not only for the sake of the economy but for the lives and conditions of people on whom it depends.
Susan George appeared on the major French radio network France Inter to debate the financial crisis and regulation. Her most recent book "Their Crises, Our Solutions" has been published in French ("Leurs Crises, Nos Solutions"); the English version is due to be published in September.
People have been literally robbed over the last thirty years as money has moved up from labour to capital. And as people have less money to spend, we are constantly in a crisis of overproduction.
The WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (the "GATS") has very much underpinned expansion without regulation and supervision, so the financial corporations had the guarantee that their expansion would be underpinned. But financial services are not the same as other services – they need special supervisory structures.
