In October 2012, the IMF provided a key explanation of why the crisis was getting worse in Europe. Its Research Department wrote that every euro cut from public spending would result in a .90 to 1.70 euro decrease in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Wolfgang Münchau, who is editorialist at the Financial Times, concludes that in this time of crisis a 3% fiscal adjustment (that is a 3% decrease in public spending) would produce a 4.5% decrease in GDP. Therefore, the current policies being pursued by European governments have been leading to a drop in economic activity making it impossible to decrease the amount of public debt. As Wolfgang Münchau writes, the IMF's motivation must not be misjudged: “The IMF does not say that austerity is too hard, too unfair, causes too much pain in the short term or hits the poor more than the rich. It says simply that austerity may not achieve its goal of reducing debt within a reasonable amount of time” [1]

- IV459 - April 2013

“As the Economist put it at year-end 2006, ‘having grown at an annual rate of 3.2% per head since 2000, the world economy is over halfway towards notching up its best decade ever. If it keeps going at this clip, it will beat both the supposedly idyllic 1950s and the 1960s. Market capitalism, the engine that runs most of the world economy, seems to be doing its job well.'”

- 4. Features

Since 2007-2008, the major central banks (the ECB, Bank of England, the “Fed” in the USA, and the Swiss National Bank) have been making it their absolute priority to attempt to avoid a collapse of the private banking system. Contrary to what has been said more or less everywhere, the principal risk threatening the banks is not that a government will suspend payment of sovereign debt. None of the bank failures since 2007 have been caused by that kind of payment default. None of the bank bailouts organized by the various governments has been made necessary by suspension of payment by an over-indebted State.

- 4. Features / Economy, Debt

More than 3,000 people were present to listen to four speakers, in the following order: Marisa Matias, EU deputy, member of the Left Bloc (Portugal); Lisaro Fernandez, miners' union leader (Asturias, Spain); Alexis Tsipras, president of SYRIZA (Greece); Eric Toussaint, president of CADTM (Belgium, www.cadtm.org ).

- IV453 - October 2012 / Greece

Since 2010, in the stronger countries of the eurozone most political leaders supported by mainstream media have flaunted their so-called generosity towards the Greek people and other weaker countries in the eurozone that are currently in the limelight (Ireland, Portugal, Spain…). In this context, measures that further destroy the economy of recipient countries and involve social regression on a scale unprecedented over the past 65 years are called ‘rescue plans'. To this we must add the ripoff of the March 2012 plan to reduce the Greek debt – a plan that involves a 50% reduction of debts owed by Greece to private banks whereas these same debts, if negotiated on the secondary market, had lost up to 65 to 75% of their value.

- IV453 - October 2012 / Europe, Germany, Greece, European Union, Debt

All eyes are turned toward Spain and its banking sector. After Greece, Portugal and Ireland, we may ask ourselves if the bailout plans are behind us or whether we are simply in the eye of the cyclone? We must remain lucid and recognize that the financial and banking crisis is far from over, both in Europe and the United States. It will have long-lasting repercussions on the rest of the world economy, and on living conditions everywhere. Yet, in Europe, in the first quarter of 2012, the major media outlets backed the declarations made by European leaders, and representatives of the ECB and private banks to convince public opinion that the policies implemented had enabled the banking system to be stabilized. - IV449 - June 2012 / Spanish state, Economy, European Union

Syriza, the radical left-wing coalition comes first in all major cities and among people aged 18-35. Its campaign advocated suspending debt payment and cancelling austerity measures. - IV448 - May 2012 / Greece

Eric Toussaint, Doctor of Political Science and President of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), is a member of the Commission for an Integral Auditing of Public Debt in Ecuador (CAIC) whose findings resulted in Ecuador stopping its repayment of part of its debt. He claims that Greece must stop paying its debt and must rise up against the Troika (the European Central Bank, the IMF and the European Commission) otherwise it will sink into the doldrums of permanent recession. - IV446 - March 2012 / Greece, Economy, European Union, Debt

The future of the Arab spring and the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street movements is very difficult to foresee. The Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings are likely to lead to a transition similar to those that ensued in Latin America, the Philippines and Korea with the end of dictatorships in the 1980s, or in South Africa in the 1990s and in several sub-Saharan African States: with the stabilization of a neo-liberal bourgeois regime. Today is a different era, the Muslim world presents very specific characteristics, and the geo-strategic stakes are significant (especially as regards Egypt and the Middle East, less so Tunisia): history is an open process. The capacity of the oppressed to organize will be decisive. - IV444 - January 2012 / World, Global Justice

In 2011 we come across several common features when looking at the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street or the Indignados movements in various countries. - IV444 - January 2012 / World, Global Justice