Departments

;

austerity

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/1/2021

    What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?

    by Adam Tooze

    The disjointed and haphazard global response to the COVID pandemic bodes poorly for the world's capacity for coordinated action to face inevitable crisies in the near future. The problem isn't a lack of means but a lack of commitment to collective action.

  • SOURCE: Academe
    5/4/2021

    Visions against Politics

    by Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck

    Historians Eileen Boris and Annelise Orleck are the guest editors of the spring edition of the AAUP's magazine focusing on the need for a New Deal for Higher Education. This is their introductory essay. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    4/6/2021

    The Meaning of the Democrats’ Spending Spree

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    Joe Biden supported a balanced budget amendment in 1995, ran as the "establishment" candidate in the Democratic primaries, and has been a regular advocate of bipartisanship. So why is his administration proposing the massive American Rescue Plan Act, and showing a willingness to act without securing Republican cooperation? A tour of recent history can explain. 

  • SOURCE: Salem News
    3/24/2021

    SSU Faculty Retrenchment Plan Accidentally Released

    Salem (MA) State University's General Counsel disputed that a spreadsheet accidentally relased in response to a records request and circulated by a faculty member constitutes a plan to terminate faculty positions for budgetary reasons. Faculty argue that it is consistent with pressure they face to accept furloughs and doubt administration assurances that retrenchment is off the table.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    3/4/2021

    The Deficit Hawks That Make Moderate Democrats Cower

    The Commitee For a Responsible Federal Budget has lobbied both parties toward austerity policies for decades. Writer Alex Yablon examines the group's origins and impact beginning in the Clinton era. 

  • SOURCE: Vox
    8/27/2020

    Those who Like Government Least Govern Worst

    Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump represent a Republican Party soaked in contempt for, and mistrust of, the federal government. When you don’t respect, or even like, the institution you lead, you lead it poorly. When that institution is incredibly, globally important — as the US government is — leading it poorly can invite global catastrophe.

  • SOURCE: Public Books
    3/18/2020

    College Worth Fighting For

    by Ryan Boyd

    Professors are in a class struggle, a real fight that cannot be won with critique alone.

  • SOURCE: NYT
    8-4-15

    The Tough Love of ‘Austerity’

    by Jennifer Szalai

    When we talk about the need for austerity in Greece, the word conveys not just an economic but a moral requirement — a lesson that must be taught.

  • SOURCE: BBC News
    7-19-13

    Amid Greek austerity, plunder of priceless treasures

    The financial crisis in Greece has already had far-reaching consequences for many people, but now it is claiming a new casualty as some of the country's ancient treasures become a target for thieves.Detective Gergios Tsoukalis puffs nervously on his cigar. In the passenger's seat of a taxi, he grapples with four different mobile phones as he tries to co-ordinate the arrest of yet another antiquities smuggler.As the driver pulls into the port, he sees ahead of him that plainclothes police officers have already pounced on the unassuming man, who is completely shocked by the early-morning operation....

  • Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

    by Mark Blyth

    Credit: Oxford University Press.This book has a rather unusual genesis. David McBride from Oxford University Press emailed me in July 2010 and asked me if I wanted to write a book about the turn to austerity in economic policy. I had been playing with a book idea called “The End of the Liberal World” for a while but really hadn't been getting all that far with it. Dave's offer seemed to be a ready-made alternative project. After all, someone had to write such a book, and since I had, as bankers say, “skin in the game” here, for reasons I shall elaborate below, I said yes. Shortly thereafter Geoffrey Kirkman, Associate Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where I am a faculty fellow, wondered if there was anything that I would like to make into a short video. I say yes – I'd do something about this new book that I have agreed to write.

  • SOURCE: Bloomberg Echoes
    5-3-13

    Andrew Edwards: How Austerity Pushed American Colonists to Revolt

    Andrew Edwards is a PhD student in American history at Princeton University. The opinions expressed are his own.As the euro area tries to wrestle member states into fiscal submission through bailouts, austerity and capital controls, it would be well advised to consider a historical precedent: the American Revolution.In the early 18th century, North America held a role in the British Empire that was similar to the one occupied by Cyprus or Slovenia in the euro area today. Americans were slavers, smugglers, rumrunners and fanatics -- as “opulent, commercial, thriving” as they were irresponsible and fiscally profligate. But as the empire struggled to stay solvent after the Seven Years War, the government of Prime Minister George Grenville attempted to bring the colonists to heel in the name of fiscal austerity.“The Circumstances of the Times, the Necessities of the Country, and the Abilities of the Colonies, concur in requiring an American Revenue,” wrote Thomas Whately, a Grenville ally, in 1765.