Wednesday 02 June, 6-8pm, RMF and Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities Roundtable

Room B33, Birkbeck College, Mallet St. WC1

The event will explore themes from the widely read RMF report ‘Eurozone in Crisis: Beggar Thyself and Thy Neighbour’. It will also contribute to the debate on the social, political and economic aspects of the Eurozone crisis that was launched by the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Since the start of 2010 the Eurozone crisis has become progressively deeper, threatening the existence of the euro as well as the coherence of the European Union. The crisis poses questions of economic malfunctioning and austerity policies imposed on several European countries, but also of democracy and state relations within the European Union. The roundtable will consider these issues from a variety of radical perspectives.

Chair: Larry Elliott, Guardian Newspaper.

• Costas Lapavitsas, SOAS, ‘Reform or Exit from the Eurozone?”
• George Irvin, SOAS, ‘Costs and Benefits of Default’
• Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, ‘The Politics of the Crisis’
• Stathis Kouvelakis, King’s College, ‘The Greek Crisis as a Crisis of the State”
• Alex Callinicos, King’s College, ‘The Eurozone and the Global Crisis’

Presentations audio (download):

Questions and answers audio (download):

 
A new RMF report considers the causes of the crisis and discusses alternative policies.

Download full report

Download Executive Summary in English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Download Press Release  in English, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

 For Media Coverage of the Report see The Guardian (by Larry Elliott, 15 March 2010), Público I – Público II (in Portuguese, 18 March 2010), Birgün I – Birgün II (in Turkish, 18-19 March 2010), Jornal de Negócios I - Jornal de Negócios II (in Portuguese, 19 March 2010), El Pais (in Spanish, 20 March 2010), Epohi (in Greek, 21 March 2010), Kathimerini (in Greek, 21 March 2010), The Guardian (by Costas Lapavitsas, 21 March 2010), BBC World Service (interview with Costas Lapavitsas, audio posted: 25 March 2010), Kokkino (in Greek, interview with Costas Lapavitsas, audio posted: 25 March 2010), Vima (in Greek, 27 March 2010), Makedonia (in Greek, 28 March 2010), Público (in Portuguese, 28 March 2010), El Pais (in Spanish, 4 April 2010), La Vanguardia (in Spanish, 4 April 2010), Epohi (in Greek, 4 April 2010), Eleftherotipia (in Greek, 11 April 2010), Epikaira (in Greek, 13 April 2010), Deia (in Euskara, 16 April 2010).

20. Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Reconsidered, by John Weeks

This paper inspects the standard policy rule that under a flexible exchange rate regime with perfectly elastic capital flows, monetary policy is effective and fiscal policy is not.  The logical validity of the statement requires that the effect of an exchange rate change on the domestic price level be ignored. The price level effect is noted in some textbooks, but not formally analyzed…

19. Neoliberalism, Income Distribution and the Causes of the Crisis, by Engelbert Stockhammer

The financial crisis that began in summer 2007 has since turned into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Its immediate causes are to be found in the malfunctioning of the financial sector: securitization of mortgages allowed for a fast growth of credit and lowered credit standards as banks believed they had passed on credit risk; this fuelled a property bubble…

18. Fiscal Crisis in Europe or a Crisis of Distribution?, by Özlem Onaran

We are in a new episode of the global crisis: the struggle to distribute the costs of the crisis. The financial speculators and corporations are relabeling the crisis as a “sovereign debt crisis” and pressurizing the governments in diverse countries ranging from Greece to Britain to cut spending to avoid taxes on their profits and wealth.

17. The Role of Banks in the Korean Financial Crisis of 1997: An Interpretation Based on the Financial Instability Hypothesis, by Juan Pablo Painceira

This paper shows the fundamental role of Korean banks in the bursting of South Korea’s financial crisis in 1997. It argues that Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis can be used as an analytical tool to explain the unfolding of the Korean financial crisis. However some changes in the original Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) are necessary to account for the institutional and structural changes of the last decades.

16. Financialisation and Capitalist Accumulation: Structural Accounts of the Crisis of 2007-9, by Costas Lapavitsas

The crisis of 2007-9 resulted from a financial bubble marked by weak production, expanding bank assets, and growing household indebtedness. For these reasons the crisis casts light on the financialisation of capitalist economies. The literature on financialisation generally links weak production with booming finance…

Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation, by Costas Lapavitsas

The current crisis is one outcome of the financialisation of contemporary capitalism. It arose in the USA because of the enormous expansion of mortgage-lending, including to the poorest layers of the working class. It became general because of the trading of debt by financial institutions. These phenomena are integral to financialisation…

Racial Exclusion and the Political Economy of the Subprime Crisis, by Gary A Dymski

This paper develops a political economic explanation of the 2007-9 US subprime crisis which focuses on one of its central causes: the transformation of racial exclusion in US mortgage-markets. Until the early 1990s, racial minorities were systematically excluded from mortgage-finance due to bank-redlining and discrimination. …

On the Content of Banking in Contemporary Capitalism, by Paulo L dos Santos

This paper considers the character and social content of banking in contemporary capitalism. Based on a survey of the operations of nine leading international banks, it documents the marked differences between contemporary banking and the traditional business of taking, making loans to enterprises, and making profits from the difference in interest-rates between them…

Academic Publications

Marois, T (2010), “Emerging Market Bank Rescues in an Era of Finance-led Neoliberalism: A Comparison of Mexico and Turkey”, Review of International Political Economy (forthcoming).

Lapavitsas, C (2009), ‘Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation‘, Historical Materialism, 17(2), 114-148.

Dymski, G (2009), ‘Racial Exclusion and the Political Economy of the Subprime Crisis‘, Historical Materialism, 17(2), 149-179.

dos Santos, P (2009), ‘On the Content of Banking in Contemporary Capitalism’, Historical Materialism, 17(2), 180-213.

Stockhammer, E (2009) ‘The Finance-Dominated Accumulation Regime, Income Distribution and the Present Crisis‘, Vienna University of Economics, Department of Economics Working Papers, No. 127, April 2009.

Newspaper Articles and Briefings

Development Viewpoint Briefings
The Role of Labour in Shielding Mexican Banks from the Financial Crisis – In analysing the banking sectors of large emerging markets, such as Mexico’s, the role of labour in helping prop up the financial system has been generally ignored….[download briefing]

Development Viewpoint Briefings
Financial Integration Intensifies New Vulnerabilities: Brazil in the Global Financial Crisis — Recently, Brazil’s adoption of an international transactions tax has focused economic debate on the increased exposure of emerging economies to the instability of international financial markets….[download briefing]

The Red Pepper At Issue
Banks for the People –The crisis of 2007-9 was a systemic upheaval rather than just the result of poor regulation, or of speculative excesses of finance. It was a crisis of financialised capitalism. Financialisation is a structural transformation of advanced capitalist economies…[download article]