Yanis Varoufakis's Blog, page 2

The Economics of Europe’s Descent into Warmongering – and our duty now!

On Tuesday, June 10 2025, I addressed a meeting at the European Parliament, an event organised by The Left and M5S Europa, on the theme of “The Economic Conditions for Peace”, alongside Jeffrey Sachs and Giuseppe Conte. My talk can be watched and read here.[INTRODUCTION]A year ago, I would have started this speech with a lament about the hitherto unimaginable conversion of the European Union from a Peace to a War Project. Not so today.Over the past year, warmongering has seeped into the very fabric of the Union, it has trickled into every policy, it has soaked every one of the thinktanks that generate Europe’s dominant narratives and creeds.Today, therefore, it makes no sense to lament what is now a fact: The EU is now a fully-fledged War Project – a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both!Europe’s military Keynesianism, I shall be arguing, is guaranteed to make Europe less safe, more unequal, weaker.Only two interesting questions remain:Why has Europe taken this road? And, now that Europe is on this war path, what is our duty to our people, to Europeans, to Peace? Let me begin at the very beginning.[THE EU WAS DESIGNED TO BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE UNITED STATES]At the risk of irking Europeanists who believe in their own creation myth, let me be clear: The European Union (from its beginnings as the European Communities of Coal & Steel) was an American Construction – a part of a US Global Plan that also comprised the Bretton Woods System, the Truman Doctrine and, of course, NATO.Yes, most Europeans hankered for no more war and no more totalitarianism. But the EU was designed in Washington DC. And it was designed specifically not as a competitive market but as a Big Business Cartel run by a democracy-free bureaucracy (also known as the European Commission) not coincidentally located a stone’s throw from NATO’s headquarters.From 1950 on, the EU was nurtured by and in tune with the interests of the United States – an inconvenient fact both for Europe’s self-important rulers and for Donald Trump.Looking back, a common thread runs through the entire history of the EU: its total economic dependence on the United States. Initially, the EU was deeply dependent on being part of the Dollar Zone. Then, from 1971 onwards, it was deeply dependent on the American trade deficit.So, one way or another, Europe’s deep dependence on the US was ingrained into its architecture. It will thus take much more than mere pronouncements – or a few hundred billion borrowed euros spent on weaponry – to shed Europe’s in-built dependence on the United States. The fact that the EU was, from the beginning, fashioned as a Big Business Cartel is the reason why the EU needed fixed exchange rates: Currency fluctuations destabilise any cartel, making it hard to maintain the necessary levels of collusion between its participating producers.From 1950 to 1971, the US took care of this problem on Europe’s behalf. As long as it was running a trade deficit with the United States, Europe’s cartel was embedded in the dollar zone – its currencies tied to the dollar But, when around 1969 Europe (and Japan) started running a trade surplus with the United States, it was game over.On 15th August 1971, the Donald Trump of that era, President Richard Nixon, jettisoned Europe from the dollar zone, his Treasury Secretary cynically telling the dumbfounded Europeans: “From today the dollar is our currency but it is your problem!”Two things happened next.First, to save their Big Business Cartel the Europeans scrambled to create their own fixed exchange rate regime. They tried everything: The Snake. The European Monetary System. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism. They all proved flimsy designs that speculators had no trouble crushing. So, in desperation, they created the most noxious currency the human spirit could fashion – the euro.The second development was that, as America expanded its budget and trade deficits, the Eurozone morphed into a German-led net exporting machine whose aggregate demand was subcontracted to the United States.In effect, America’s twin deficits operated like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucked into America Europe’s net exports as well as the European exporters’ profits which were thus invested in US Treasuries, US shares and US real estate. That’s how, once it was expelled from the dollar zone, Europe became addicted to the US deficits.That was what the Nixon Shock did: It converted Europe’s utter reliance on living within the dollar zone into an even greater dependence on the US deficits.[NEVER MISSING A CHANCE TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY]Here in Brussels they love the expression that Europe progresses from crisis to crisis. That’s another delusion.The crisis of 2008 was our greatest opportunity to render the European Union viable, and to end its deep dependence on the United States.The French and German banks went bankrupt.The Eurozone’s impossible rules were in tatters.A domino effect, beginning with Greece, was bankrupting our governments.It was the perfect opportunity to transform the EU from a Big Business Cartel, inherently reliant on the US for its aggregate demand, into a functional, internally balanced federation.Instead, Europe’s radical centre (both the centre right and the centre left) decided that they would change everything so as to ensure that nothing changes. In this vein, they did their worst: Universal austerity for the many. And frantic money printing for the financiers and Big Business.What happens when you crush the incomes of the many and hand over trillions to the very few?Since the many are too poor to buy high value added goods, business stops investing in productive capital –– while the rich use the free cash to push through the roof house prices, share prices, Bitcoin prices, art, asset prices in general.The natural result is soul-crushing levels of inequality and deep popular discontent.The people got desperate. They even voted for radical progressives like me to enter the Eurogroup! Then, in horror, Brussels and Frankfurt overthrew us, or made Mr Tsipras overthrow his own government, using not the tanks, as they did in Greece in 1967, but the banks – not that much of a difference really! A coup d’ état is a coup d’ état.[TWO SYMBIOTIC AUTHORITARIANISMS]Guess what happened next: Just as in the mid-war period, xenophobic ultra-rightists rose up from the woodwork.They proved a godsent for the shockingly unpopular radical centre whose politicians could now say to voters: It is us or them!But it was equally a godsent for the ultra-right who needed the radical centre to impose the austerity policies which created the discontent which fuelled the anger that delivered the ultra-right votes.To put it differently, if Macron and Le Pen had any sense, they would each keep a framed picture of the other on their bedside tables, saying a little prayer in their hated opponent’s name every night before going to sleep.[SMOKE AND MIRRORS]Liberal Totalitarianism and Ultra-Right-Xenophobic Totalitarianism are accomplices, they feed off each other.Meanwhile, austerity for the many and money printing for the few depletes Europe’s productive foundations, its social fabric, its sense of purpose.That’s how the European Union lost any legitimacy it had in the eyes of the public.Sensing this, the Liberal Totalitarians in charge came up with one failed Grand Initiative after another. Who can forget the eminently forgettable Juncker investment plan, the Banking Union, the Green Deal, or the Draghi Report that has now joined them in History’s Dustbin?Impressive numbers were announced that, alas, dependably failed to materialise. It was inevitable. As long as our rulers said NO to the political union that could sustain a proper, macroeconomically significant, eurobond, the money to fund the necessary investment could never materialise. Even when they – finally – during the pandemic – did issue common debt, they ended up with common liabilities but no common purpose.Every Grand Initiative ever announced was a dance with failure,  smoke and mirrors by which they disguised Europe’s nakedness. The result?After fifteen years of ZERO NET PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT,Germany is deindustrialising fast, and along with it Eastern and Central Europe, Austria, Northern ItalyPolitical paralysis grows on the back of fiscal pressuresNeofascism and xenophobia are rising up everywhereEurope’s dependence on the United States grows stronger at the time Donald Trump is cutting Europe looseThe Rest of the World looks at Europe as a sad case of what could have been, an irritating irrelevance.In this sad context, our great and good leaders had another woeful idea for a Grand Initiative: Now that the Green Deal is dead-in-the-water and the Recovery Fund is spent, why not try Military Keynesianism?[THE FOLLY OF MILITARY KEYNESIANISM]Ladies and Gentlemen,Military Keynesianism works in the United States because America has the federal institutions, the monetary sovereignty, the fiscal power, the technostructure, and the common procurement process that are essential in implementing Military Keynesianism. Europe has none of that, nor does it have leaders interested in acquiring any of that. This is why Military Keynesianism cannot work in Europe.Thank goodness it can’t work, I say! For if it could work, Europe would have to emulate the United States in starting a war every year so that the stocks of ammunition, missiles et al could be depleted sufficiently to justify the new colossal orders necessary to maintain Military Keynesianism.Nevertheless, while Europe’s Military Keynesianism cannot and should not work, it serves a purpose – it is a kind of a solution for, say, Volkswagen: Now that Volkswagen can no longer sell its cars, it hands over whole production lines to Rheinmetall to produce Leopard tanks which von der Leyen makes Greece and Italy buy even though we neither want nor need them.Yes, Military Keynesianism will fail Europe badly, but not before it further bankrupts our states and throws more fuel onto the fire burning down lives and dreams in Ukraine’s killing fields.So, let me be frank:No really-existing enemy of Europe shakes in his boots watching a stagnating, heavily indebted Europe, invest billions in weaponry. Quite the opposite!Military Keynesianism will end up as Europe’s New Austerity for the many and a new money spinner for the few.It will make Europe weaker while prolonging the Ukraine War in a manner that is detrimental to the stated aim of supporting Ukraine.[EUROPE’S SURRENDER TO NATO, ITS ROLE IN UKRAINE]It is at this point that angry yelps will rise up from the press gallery. Can’t you hear them ask: ““Is Russia not ante portas?” “Is Europe not in danger?” “Should Europe remain defenceless, especially now that Trump is abandoning Europe?”My answer is clear: Weakening ourselves economically through a Military Keynesianism that constitutes the New Austerity which will, with mathematical precision, diminish Europe further is no way to make Europe stronger!And lest we forget, Europe already has 1.5m men and women in uniform while, over the past decade, we spent €2.7 trillion on defence – a period during which our net productive investment was zero! Now, NATO demands that we spend three times as much – which is totally insane, given how wastefully that €2.7 trillion was spent.In this light, surrendering our foreign and defence policies to NATO, and sinking further in unsustainable debt just to satisfy President Trump’s demands for more military spending, is the surest way of making Europe more dependent, less secure, uglier and sadder.In this context, the powers-that-be here in Brussels are anxiously trying to keep their jobs and boost their budgets by spreading the lie that NATO had to expand in order to deter Russian aggression – when it is exactly the other way round: Like the Mafia, NATO expanded to create insecurity in order to sell us protection!Does this mean that Putin was right to invade the Ukraine? Of course not. What it means is that NATO and Putin are accomplices – that they needed one another in their joint bid for a confrontation that strengthened both – at Europe’s expense.It also means that anyone truly interested in Europe’s security and prosperitymust dispel the lie that Russia is about to invade us – it can’t even if it wants tomust work tirelessly to kill Europe’s Military Keynesianism, andmust work toward a European Peace Process which uses Russia’s confiscated monies not as a piggybank for more useless Leopard tanks and Leonardo missiles but as a bargaining chip to end the Ukraine War in the context of a comprehensive EU-Russia Peace Treaty.As for the politicians in this town who will not rest until they see Russia on its knees, I have this to say to them:If you really wanted to weaken Russia, to bring Russia to its knees, you should have worked hard to admit Russia into the… Eurozone. In one fell swoop the euro would have wrecked Russia’s productive basis, it would have indebted its people and its state, it would have made its leaders rush to Brussels and to Frankfurt with begging bowl in hand!You think I am joking. But there is too much truth in this joke for comfort!To sum up my argument so far, Europe’s economic stagnation was the product of its total dependence on the American deficits. This dependence yielded Europe’s complicity with the decade-long American project of inciting a war in Ukraine.And now that the US is decoupling, our rulers – resembling decapitated chickens – are running around without their heads screwed on, struggling to find ways of continuing to impede Peace in Ukraine so as to use military funds to prop up Europe’s faltering Big Business Cartel.[WHAT’S BEHIND EUROPE’S ETHICAL DECAY: GAZA, TOTALITARIANISM]Ladies and Gentlemen, as we speak here today, Europe is falling headlong into another ethical void: complicity in the Palestinian genocide.It is not just the embarrassment, also known as Mrs Ursula von der Leyen, posing like a cheerleader of Israel’s genocidal army in front of its tanks hours before they stormed Gaza.No, the European Union is not merely complicit due to our subservience to the United States. No, the European Union is also enabling, it is in fact funding, the war criminals of its own accord. Directly. Cynically. With no compunction.BNP PARIBAS and ALLIANZ underwrite the issues of the Israeli government bonds that fund the Israeli meatgrinder in the Palestinian Occupied TerritoriesMAERSK is the prime transporter of the military machine at work in GazaSince 2007, the European Union has channelled €2 billion of research funding to Israeli entities producing the means by which Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, targeted, murdered and maimed.But there is something even scarier going on: Some of our top institutions depend financially on backing Israel’s genocide. If Europe were to do its duty and sanction Israel, the Technical University of Munich stands to lose €195.4 million from the EU’s HORIZON program which funds the University to carry out joint research with Israeli institutions.Ladies and Gentlemen,Europe carries an enormous guilt. The pogroms against the Jews started here, in Europe. Europeans carried out genocides across Africa, in the Americas, in Australia. By forming the EU as a Peace Project, we claimed a chance to make amends for Europe’s past genocides.However, our dependence on the US and our ruling class’s penchant to profit from imperialism have made this impossible – and so Europe’s hands are, again, covered in the blood of innocents, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the Sudan, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria.It has also brought totalitarianism back into our midst, here in Europe. When the German authorities banned me from entering Germany for the crime of co-organising with German Jews a conference on the theme of ‘A Just Peace in the Middle East’, they were making a point:To them, letting the rivers of Palestinian blood flow unimpeded represented their chance of washing off their hands the guilt over the Holocaust, over the other German genocide in Namibia, of Belgium’s crimes against humanity in the Congo…It is, therefore, a clear warning to us: Economic stagnation begets warmongering which begets a revived European white settler mentality. This Europe has fallen so far into a moral crevice that it cannot easily climb out of it.Europe’s Liberal Totalitarianism, which we in Greece experienced in all its horror ten years ago, is now everywhere – and it is throwing wide open the gates through which Xenophobic Ultra-Right Totalitarianism arrives to darken our doorstep.The time to rise up against both forms of totalitarianism is now. On behalf of the peoples of Europe.[WHAT MUST WE DO?]So, what must we do? Let us begin by grasping that:The economic condition for Peace is to de-couple Europe’s economy from America’s wars!But for that we must end, once and for all, Europe’s dependence on the United States.This entails ending Europe’s dependence on net exports toWhich means rebalancing Europe’s internal economy throughnew productive green investments,an end to structural austerityan end to the madness of cartel-infested electricity ‘markets’a new monetary commons by which to end the bankers’ monopoly over payments and to institute a personal dividend for alla new EU-China deal that liberates us from America’s agenda of intensifying a pointless New Cold War at our expense.Only by transforming Europe’s political economy can we end the never-ending fragmentation which breeds war, totalitarianism and the embarrassment of being led by cheerleaders of genocide and permanent war with Russia, like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas.How can we accomplish that? In two ways.First, we need a Credible Plan for a Europe worth fighting for.Second, we must organise a campaign of civil and governmental disobedience in our countries and, potentially, in the European Council until our Plan for Europe gets a chance.We, DiEM25, have worked for a decade on this Plan – our Green New Deal for Europe – and are happy to share it with you, so that you can refine, revise, adapt it.You, the 5S Movement and other parties eager to partake across Europe, have the organisation that we lack so that, together with our MERA25 transnational parties, we can together help organise the campaign of civil and governmental disobedience without which nothing will change, nothing will impede Europe’s, Italy’s, Greece’s, indeed Germany’s secular decline.[CONCLUSION]So, to conclude, seventy-five years of this European Union teach us that we face a stark choice.A choice between a Dependent-on-the-United States, Warmongering, Stagnating Europe. Or an Independent, Non-Aligned, Prosperous, Green Europe.A choice between a von der Leyen-type Commission that greenlights genocide, impedes Peace, illegally deletes her Pfizer chat history, lobbies for Lockheed Martin, and borrows money we can’t repay to buy weaponry we do not need – while condemning People and Planet to impecunity.  Or  European Institutions optimised against raw power and in favour of common prosperity.A choice between being at the beck and call of the boardrooms of Rheinmetall, Leonardo and Pfizer, blind to the tax havens where war profits and tax fraud hide, while our coastguards turn refugees into corpses. Or a Europe of rational, that is a radical, humanism.To even have this choice, our immediate task must be to end war, to end genocide and to terminate before it is too late the New Austerity going by the name of Military Keynesianism.

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A Chinese New Bretton Woods? – Quancha op-ed

Donald Trump has made it impossible for any sensible person to persevere in the delusion that global business can continue as usual. We should all welcome this, even if we are livid with Trump’s shocking behaviour, decisions and narratives.The global economy will either be rebalanced or it will crash in ways that may make the 2008 crisis look like a walk in the park. The only question, therefore, that is worth posing is: Who can do what to help undo the imbalances damaging the Global Majority (the developing world) and raising the spectre of fascism across the Global Minority (the Western economies)?We know who is powerless to step into the fray and contribute to the world’s rebalancing: the European Union. The reason why the EU has ruled itself out needs to be traced in the original architecture of its common currency (the euro) and, later, with the EU’s steadfast refusal to utilise the tumultuous euro crisis as an opportunity properly to federalise fiscal and investment decision-making. As a result, the EU has now entered a long-term, secular economic stagnation as well as political fragmentation.We also know who is unwilling to help rebalance the world: the United States. While US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent waxes lyrical about rebalancing trade and capital flows, the Trump administration he is labouring for is only interested in the contradictory aims of, on the one hand, undervaluing the dollar while, on the other, attracting even larger quantities of capital to the United States – a contradiction that can only be resolved through massive coercion that the US lacks both the power and the discipline to implement.Who is left? The answer is: China. As far back as in April 2009, at the G20 meeting in London whose purpose was to coordinate monetary policies globally in a bid to stem the North Atlantic financial collapse from getting worse and from spreading, the Chinese delegation welcomed the idea of revisiting the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 and reviving John Maynard Keynes’ proposal (known as International Clearing Union, ICU). Alas, in exactly the same way that the United States had rejected Keynes’ proposal in 1944, the United States snubbed Beijing’s suggestion in 2009. The rest is the sad history of the past sixteen years: a world whose imbalances grew larger and are now spinning out of control.Given that the EU cannot and the US will not help reign in the crippling imbalances, what could China do? My answer is: Establish a New Bretton Woods without the US or the EU, beginning with the BRICS+ and then admitting other countries once the benefits for this new system become apparent. Lest I am misunderstood, my proposal here is not that China should become an alternative global hegemon by reviving the actual Bretton Woods system (as it functioned in the 1950s and 1960s). No, my proposal is that China should build a truly multilateral system, in close collaboration with its BRICS+ partners – a New Bretton Woods mirroring Keynes’ 1944 proposal, the very proposal President Roosevelt’s team rejected in order to establish America’s hegemony.Before explaining how this New Bretton Woods might work, let me address some of the objections that will most likely be raised – especially in the West. Many will rgue that China cannot be the backbone of any international trading system because it imposes capital controls. Do they forget that Bretton Woods (both the actual system and Keynes’ ICU proposal) was founded – quite sensibly – on capital controls? Others will protest that to be at the heart of a large international trading and monetary system, a country must run a trade deficit, so that others can have a trade surplus with it. Do they forget that the original purpose of Bretton Woods was to maintain the US trade surpluses? Clearly, these objections reflect more the prejudices of the objectors than any serious economic analysis.Let me now turn to how this New Bretton Woods might work as a genuine multilateral system based on non-hegemony and mutual advantage. To counter the tendency of the market-driven trading system to generate increasing imbalances, Keynes had advocated the replacement of any system where “…the process of adjustment is compulsory for the debtor and voluntary for the creditor” with one where the force of adjustment falls symmetrically upon debtors and creditors. Here is what such a system might look like.Participating countries keep their own currencies and central banks. All trade and capital flows between countries are denominated in a common digital accounting unit; let’s call it the kosmos. Every country’s central bank keeps a reserve account, in kosmos, with some common institution (e.g., the existing New Development Bank) that issues the kosmos on the basis of a transparent digital distributed ledger and an algorithm that adjusts the kosmos total supply in a pre-agreed manner in relation to the volume of world trade, allowing also for an automatic countercyclical component that boosts the global kosmos supply at times of a general slowdown.Foreign exchange markets would function as they do now and the exchange rate between the kosmos and various currencies would vary in the same way that the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights do viz. the dollar, the euro, the yen etc. The difference, of course, would be that, under the New Bretton Woods, all payments between participating countries pass through their central bank’s kosmos account.So far, nothing that has been proposed mitigates the underlying tendency to build up imbalances within the system (large trade deficits and surpluses). However, this new institutional setting allows for two key interventions that will not only limit imbalances but will also unlock massive potential for mutual development. I call these two interventions The Levy and The Charge. Here is what they are and how they work.The Levy: A trade imbalance levy to be charged annually to each central bank’s kosmos account in proportion to its current account deficit or surplus and paid into a Common Development Fund (CDF) held at the kosmos issuing multilateral institutionThe Charge: Private financial institutions to pay a ‘surge’ fee into the same common fund, the CDF, in proportion to any surge of capital flows out of a country, reminiscent of the congestion price-hike that companies like Uber charge their customers at times of peak traffic.The Levy’s rationale is to motivate governments of surplus countries to boost domestic spending and investment while systematically reducing the international spending power of deficit countries. Foreign exchange markets will factor this in, adjusting exchange rates faster in response to current account imbalances and cancelling out much of the capital flows which today support chronically unbalanced trade. As for the Charge, it will automatically penalise speculative herd-like capital inflows or outflows without, however, handing discretionary power to bureaucrats or the need for inflexible capital controls.Suddenly, through this New Bretton Woods’ common fund, the CDF, the participating countries will have acquired, without the need for any subscribed capital, an extra Global Sovereign Wealth Fund (in addition to the existing funds of the New Development Bank) that achieves two aims at once: it balances global trade and it generates new funding for the Just Green Transition at a planetary scale.****Is this feasible? It sure is. China has the technology, in particular expertise in highly sophisticated digital payment systems. The rest of the world has the urgent need for a trading system that generates stability and mutual advantage, rather than imbalances and exploitation. We also have institutional experience with international clearing systems. What the world lacks is the political process that can bring all these elements together.Would it not be a delicious irony if Donald Trump’s shock therapy, which he claims is all about rebalancing the world economy, helped motivate China to accept the challenge to do so by coordinating with countries around the world, not just the BRICS, to build the multilateral system that Keynes had envisaged in 1944 but which was rejected so that the United States could dominate the world for another eight decades?

For the quancha.cn site where this article was originally published (in Chinese), click here.

NOTES See J.M. Keynes: Activities 1940-44: Shaping the post-war world 8th August, 1941, p.28, ‘The Clearing Union’, Cambridge University Press, 1980 E.g. the European Central Bank’s Target2 account which taxes balance of payments’ deficits within the Eurozone.

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Δεν αρκεί η καταδίκη του Ισραήλ. Γιατί το ΜέΡΑ25 απαιτούμε εμπάργκο και κατάργηση κάθε οικονομικής συνεργασίας – Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 28 Μάη 2025

Το ΜέΡΑ25 χαιρετίζουμε την μερική στροφή που παρατηρείται σε μεγάλο μέρος του πολιτικού κόσμου το οποίο από την 7η Οκτωβρίου 2023 έως πρόσφατα δεν τολμούσε να καταδικάσει απερίφραστα το Ισραήλ. Άργησε αυτή η «στροφή» απελπιστικά αλλά τουλάχιστον έγινε – έστω και μερικώς. Αυτό που λείπει για να ολοκληρωθεί είναι, πέραν της κατάργησης κάθε στρατιωτικής συνεργασίας και εμπόριου όπλων, η απαίτηση για πλήρες εμπορικό εμπάργκο και κατάργηση κάθε οικονομικής συνεργασίας.Το ΜέΡΑ25, από χρόνια ταγμένο στο πλευρό του BDS, καλεί συστηματικά για εμπάργκο, μποϋκοτάζ, αποεπενδύσεις και κυρώσεις στο Ισραήλ. Ο λόγος; Ποτέ μια Κατοχή ή κάποιο αποικιοκρατικό καθεστώς δεν κατάφερε να αναπαραχθεί χωρίς την στήριξη ενός διεθνούς δίκτυου επιχειρήσεων που λειτουργεί στο πλαίσιο του φυλετικού αποικιοκρατικού καπιταλισμού (*) –  ενός δίκτυου που, στην περίπτωση του Ισραήλ, συμμετέχει πλήρως η Ελλάδα, με επιλογή των κυβερνήσεων ΝΔ, ΠΑΣΟΚ και ΣΥΡΙΖΑ.Η γενοκτονία είναι κερδοφόραΕίναι αξιοσημείωτο ότι το ισραηλινό Χρηματιστήριο όχι μόνο δεν έπεσε από τότε που ξεκίνησε η γενοκτονία, αλλά ανέβηκε κατά 161%. Αυτό αντικατοπτρίζει την υποκείμενη Πολιτική Οικονομία της Κατοχής & Γενοκτονίας και, ειδικότερα, τον τρόπο με τον οποίο χιλιάδες ισραηλινές εταιρείες είναι συνυφασμένες με αμερικανικές, ευρωπαϊκές και κορεατικές (συμπεριλαμβανομένων των χρηματοπιστωτικών ομίλων της Δύσης). Αυτό το δίκτυο, στο οποίο συμμετέχει το Ελληνικό Δημόσιο και ελληνικές εταιρείες, την επομένη  της 7η Οκτωβρίου 2023 μπήκε σε υπερ-λειτουργία, τριπλασιάζοντας τους ρυθμούς του και την στήριξή του της Ισραηλινής πολεμικής μηχανής.Κι επειδή είναι καλό να μιλάμε συγκεκριμένα όταν αναφερόμαστε στο εν λόγω εταιρικό δίκτυο, αξίζει να το σκιαγραφήσουμε. Στην κορυφή του βρίσκονται δύο υπερ-εταιρείες: η Blackrock και η Vanguard που είναι βασικοί μέτοχοι στις εξής εταιρείες χωρίς τις οποίες η γενοκτονία θα σταματούσε σε μερικές ώρες:Lockheed-Martin, η κατασκευάστρια των F35 που βομβαρδίζουν τη Γάζα όλο το εικοσιτετράωροPalantir, η οποία σχεδιάζει τους αλγόριθμους που επιλέγουν στόχους σε όλη τη ΓάζαCaterpillar, η κατασκευάστρια, μεταξύ άλλων, της ισραηλινής μπουλντόζας D9 που κατεδαφίζει σπίτια και ανοίγει το δρόμο στους ισραηλινούς στρατιώτεςELBIT, η ισραηλινή εταιρεία ανάπτυξης όπλων μαζικής δολοφονίας των Παλαιστίνιων, με την οποία έχει συνάψει πάμπολλες συμφωνίες το Ελληνικό ΔημόσιοΟι τράπεζες BNP Paribas και Barclays, που μαζί με την ασφαλιστική ALLIANZ, είναι οι ανάδοχοι των εκδόσεων των ισραηλινών κρατικών ομολόγων τα οποία χρηματοδοτούν την ισραηλινή κρεατομηχανήCHEVRON-BP-PETROBAS, οι πετρελαϊκές εταιρείες που τροφοδοτούν τον στρατό και την αεροπορία του Ισραήλ με καύσιμαP. MOLLER – MAERSK A/S, ο κύριος μεταφορέας των πρώτων υλών και του στρατιωτικού εξοπλισμού που αναπτύσσεται στη Γάζα – αλλά και, γενικότερα, ο κύριος μεταφορέας από τον οποίο εξαρτώνται οι εξαγωγές και οι εισαγωγές του Ισραήλ.Από την πρώτη στιγμή, όπως ήταν φυσικό, ο ισραηλινός αμυντικός προϋπολογισμός διπλασιάστηκε. Αυτή η αύξηση προσέλκυσε γιγαντιαίες «επενδύσεις» από τις πιο πάνω εταιρείες στη δολοφονική μηχανή του Ισραήλ. Έτσι εξηγείται γιατί οι μετοχές στο ισραηλινό Χρηματιστήριο ξεπετάχθηκαν σε μια περίοδο που κατρακυλούσαν η ζήτηση αγαθών, η παραγωγή και η καταναλωτική εμπιστοσύνη.Η κατοχή είναι το ιδανικό εργαστήριο και πεδίο δοκιμών της Big TechΚαμία χώρα δεν έχει δώσει τόσο μεγάλη πρόσβαση στα βιομετρικά δεδομένα ενός ολόκληρου πληθυσμού όσο έδωσε το Ισραήλ στην IBM. Από τότε μάλιστα που ξεκίνησε η γενοκτονία στη Γάζα, η Microsoft, η Amazon, η Alphabet (Google) και η Palantir έχουν επεκτείνει τις υπηρεσίες υπολογιστικού νέφους (το οποίο ονομάζω νεφοκεφάλαιο) με ρυθμούς που κόβουν την ανάσα. Το λογισμικό αναγνώρισης προσώπου, οι αλγόριθμοι επιλογής στόχου και τα αυτοματοποιημένα συστήματα εκτελέσεων με βόμβες ή με ντρόουνς δοκιμάζονται σε πραγματικό χρόνο, κατά τη βούληση των ίδιων των εταιρειών, και με λιγότερους ηθικούς περιορισμούς από ό,τι στην περίπτωση των πειραμάτων σε εργαστηριακούς αρουραίους. Η Big Tech πραγματικά πλέει σε πελάγη ευτυχίας!Κορυφαία πανεπιστήμια των ΗΠΑ και της ΕΕ θα χρεοκοπήσουν αν σταματήσουν να είναι συνένοχοι στη γενοκτονία του Ισραήλ Η εξάρτηση μεταξύ της Δύσης και της ικανότητας του Ισραήλ να διεξάγει τις γενοκτονικές πολιτικές του είναι αμφίδρομη. Ενώ δεν υπάρχει αμφιβολία ότι αν το Ισραήλ αποκοπεί από το προαναφερθέν διεθνές δίκτυο επιχειρηματικών ομίλων, υπάρχουν κορυφαία ιδρύματα στις ΗΠΑ και την ΕΕ που θα αντιμετωπίσουν σοβαρές οικονομικές δυσκολίες (ακόμη και χρεοκοπία) αν αποφασίσουν να σταματήσουν να υποστηρίζουν τη γενοκτονία του Ισραήλ.Πάρτε για παράδειγμα, το Τεχνικό Πανεπιστήμιο του Μονάχου το οποίο κινδυνεύει να χάσει €195,4 εκ. από το πρόγραμμα HORIZONS της ΕΕ, το οποίο χρηματοδοτεί το Πανεπιστήμιο για να διεξάγει κοινή έρευνα με ισραηλινά ιδρύματα. Από το 2007, η ΕΕ έχει διοχετεύσει €2 δισ για ερευνητικά προγράμματα στα οποία συμμετέχουν ισραηλινοί φορείς. Στο μεταξύ, στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες, τα εργαστήρια του MIT επεκτείνονται διαρκώς διεξάγοντας έρευνα (R&D) για λογαριασμό του Υπουργείου Άμυνας του Ισραήλ, ενώ, επίσης, συνδέουν τους φοιτητές του MIT με τις αναπτυσσόμενες επιχειρηματικές δραστηριότητες της Lockheed-Martin (κατασκευάστρια των F35) στο Ισραήλ. Κάτι αντίστοιχο συμβαίνει και στη Βρετανία, όπου, για παράδειγμα, το Πανεπιστήμιο του Εδιμβούργου φιλοξενεί την Πανεπιστημιακή Αμυντική Ερευνητική Συνεργασία από κοινού με το Πανεπιστήμιο Μπεν Γκουριόν. Αυτή η αύξουσα εξάρτηση των πανεπιστημιακών ιδρυμάτων της Δύσης από τη συνέχιση της εθνοκάθαρσης και της γενοκτονίας του Ισραήλ αναπαράγει εκείνο που, στη εισαγωγή, ανέφερα ως η Πολιτική Οικονομία της Κατοχής & Γενοκτονίας.Η Ελλάδα, αν και δεν διαθέτει επιχειρηματικούς κολοσσούς ή πανεπιστήμια αντίστοιχου βεληνεκούς, παρόλα αυτά υπερ-εκπροσωπείται σε αυτό το επιχειρηματικό και πανεπιστημιακό δίκτυο και, έτσι, αποτελεί συνένοχο της Ισραηλινής Κατοχής & Γενοκτονίας. Ήρθε η ώρα και τα υπόλοιπα κόμματα της Αντιπολίτευσης, ιδίως εκείνα τα οποία συνυπέγραψαν εμπορικές και αμυντικές συμφωνίες, να ενώσουν τις φωνές τους μαζί μας απαιτώντας  πλήρες εμπορικό εμπάργκο και κατάργηση κάθε οικονομικής, ερευνητικής ή πανεπιστημιακής συνεργασίας.

(*) Βλ. Philip J. Stern, Empires Incorporated: The Corporations that Built British Colonialism. Harvard University Press, 2023

Για την ιστοσελίδα της ΕφΣυν όπου δημοσιεύτηκε αρχικά, πατήστε εδώ.

 

The post Δεν αρκεί η καταδίκη του Ισραήλ. Γιατί το ΜέΡΑ25 απαιτούμε εμπάργκο και κατάργηση κάθε οικονομικής συνεργασίας – Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 28 Μάη 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Ένα κινεζικό νέο Μπρέτον Γουντς; – Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 2 Ιουνίου 2025

Μέσα σ’ όλα τα τραγικά που έχει κάνει ο Τραμπ, έκανε κι ένα καλό: διέλυσε κάθε αυταπάτη ότι η διεθνής οικονομία μπορεί να παραμείνει όσο ανισόρροπη ήταν τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες. Τα γιγαντιαία ελλείμματα κάποιων και τα θεόρατα πλεονάσματα άλλων είτε θα εξισορροπηθούν είτε το διεθνές σύστημα θα καταρρεύσει με τρόπο που θα κάνει το Κραχ του 2008 να θυμίζει παιδική απογευματινή. Το μόνο ερώτημα, συνεπώς, που αξίζει να τεθεί είναι: Ποιος μπορεί να κάνει τι για να βοηθήσει στην άρση των ανισορροπιών που βλάπτουν την Παγκόσμια Πλειοψηφία (τον αναπτυσσόμενο κόσμο) και αυξάνουν το φάσμα του φασισμού στην Παγκόσμια Μειονότητα (τις δυτικές οικονομίες);Ξέρουμε ποιος δεν έχει τα φόντα – ούτε τη δύναμη ούτε τη βούληση – να συμβάλει στην επανεξισορρόπηση του κόσμου: η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση. Ο λόγος εντοπίζεται στην ανόητη διαχείριση της αναπόφευκτης κρίσης του σαθρού ευρώ, η οποία είχε ως αποτέλεσμα την μόνιμη οικονομική στασιμότητα και τον πολιτικό κατακερματισμό της ΕΕ.Γνωρίζουμε επίσης ποιός δεν θέλει να συμβάλει στην επανεξισορρόπηση του κόσμου: οι ΗΠΑ. Ενώ ο Υπουργός Οικονομικών των ΗΠΑ Σκοτ Μπέσεντ μιλάει με λυρισμό για την επανεξισορρόπηση του εμπορίου και των ροών κεφαλαίων, η κυβέρνηση Τραμπ ενδιαφέρεται μόνο για τους αντιφατικούς στόχους, αφενός, της υποτίμησης του δολαρίου και, αφετέρου, της προσέλκυσης ακόμη μεγαλύτερων ποσοτήτων κεφαλαίου στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες – μια αντίφαση που μπορεί να επιλυθεί μόνο μέσω μαζικού καταναγκασμού του υπόλοιπου κόσμου που οι ΗΠΑ δεν έχουν ούτε τη δύναμη ούτε την πειθαρχία να επιβάλουν.Ποιος απομένει; Η Κίνα. Στην ευχέρεια του Πεκίνου είναι να ιδρύσει παγκόσμιο νομισματικό και εμπορικό σύστημα, με πολλά κοινά με το σύστημα Μπρέτον Γουντς (1944-1971), χωρίς τις ΗΠΑ ή την ΕΕ, ξεκινώντας με βάση τις BRICS+ στις οποίες σταδιακά θα προσέλθουν κι άλλες χώρες. Για να μην παρεξηγηθώ, η πρότασή μου εδώ δεν είναι ότι η Κίνα μπορεί ή πρέπει να γίνει ο εναλλακτικός παγκόσμιος ηγεμόνας αντιγράφοντας το σύστημα Μπρέτον Γουντς όπως εκείνο λειτουργούσε. Όχι, η πρότασή μου είναι ότι η Κίνα θα πρέπει να οικοδομήσει ένα πραγματικά πολυμερές σύστημα, πιο κοντά στο πνεύμα της πρότασης του Keynes την οποία απέρριψε μετ’ επαίνων στην διάσκεψη του Μπρέτον Γουντς η ομάδα του Προέδρου Ρούσβελτ προκειμένου να εδραιώσει την ηγεμονία της Αμερικής.Πώς μπορεί να λειτουργήσει αυτό το νέο Μπρέτον Γουντς ως γνήσιο πολυμερές σύστημα που βασίζεται στην μη ηγεμονία και το αμοιβαίο όφελος; Για να αντιμετωπιστεί η τάση των διεθνών αγοραίων εμπορικών ανταλλαγών προς μεγάλα ελλείμματα και μεγάλα πλεονάσματα, ο Keynes πρότεινε ένα σύστημα όπου το βάρος της προσαρμογής θα πέφτει συμμετρικά τόσο στις ελλειμματικές όσο και στις πλεονασματικές χώρες. Ιδού πώς θα μπορούσε να λειτουργεί ένα τέτοιο σύστημα.Οι συμμετέχουσες χώρες διατηρούν τα δικά τους νομίσματα και τις δικές τους κεντρικές τράπεζες. Όλες οι εμπορικές και κεφαλαιακές ροές μεταξύ των χωρών εκφράζονται σε κοινή ψηφιακή λογιστική μονάδα- ας την ονομάσουμε kosmo. Η κεντρική τράπεζα κάθε χώρας τηρεί λογαριασμό αποθεμάτων σε kosmo σε κάποιο κοινό ίδρυμα (π.χ. την Νέα Αναπτυξιακή Τράπεζα των BRICS) που εκδίδει το kosmo βάσει ενός διαφανούς ψηφιακού συστήματος blockchain κι ενός αλγορίθμου που προσαρμόζει τη διεθνή ποσότητα μονάδων kosmo με προσυμφωνημένο τρόπο σε σχέση με τον όγκο του παγκόσμιου εμπορίου, επιτρέποντας επίσης την αυτόματη αύξηση της ποσότητας των cosmo σε περιόδους διεθνούς ύφεσης.Οι αγορές συναλλάγματος θα λειτουργoύν όπως και τώρα ενώ η συναλλαγματική ισοτιμία μεταξύ του kosmo και των διαφόρων νομισμάτων θα μεταβάλλεται όπως σήμερα μεταβάλλεται η ισοτιμία της λογιστικής μονάδας του ΔΝΤ (των SDRs) με το δολάριο, το ευρώ κλπ. Η διαφορά, βέβαια, είναι  ότι, στο πλαίσιο του νέου Μπρέτον Γουντς, όλες οι πληρωμές μεταξύ των συμμετεχουσών χωρών θα περνούν μέσω του λογαριασμού kosmo των κεντρικών τους τραπεζώνΜέχρι στιγμής, τίποτα από τα πιο πάνω δεν μετριάζει την υποκείμενη τάση για δημιουργία διεθνών ανισορροπιών (μεγάλα εμπορικά ελλείμματα και πλεονάσματα). Ωστόσο, αυτό το νέο θεσμικό πλαίσιο επιτρέπει δύο βασικές παρεμβάσεις που όχι μόνο θα περιορίσουν τις ανισορροπίες αλλά και θα ξεκλειδώσουν σημαντικές δυνατότητες για κοινή ανάπτυξη. Ονομάζω αυτές τις δύο παρεμβάσεις Εισφορά (Levy) και Χρέωση (Charge):Εισφορά: Ο λογαριασμός σε kosmo κάθε χώρας χρεώνεται ένα ποσό kosmo ανάλογο με το εμπορικό της έλλειμμα ή (συμμετρικά) πλεόνασμα. Τα ποσά αυτά μεταβιβάζονται αυτόματα σε κοινό αναπτυξιακό ταμείο (ΚΑΤ) που τηρείται στο πολυμερές ίδρυμα το οποίο εκδίδει το kosmo.Χρέωση: Κάθε φορά που οι ροές χρήματος μεταξύ μίας χώρας και μιας άλλης επιταχύνονται απότομα (προφανώς καιροσκοπικά), τα ιδιωτικά χρηματοπιστωτικά ιδρύματα που διακινούν αυτά τα κεφάλαια αυτόματα καταβάλουν στο ίδιο κοινό ταμείο, το ΚΑΤ, ένα ποσοστό (σε kosmo) ανάλογο της επιτάχυνσης της ροής κεφαλαίων – κάτι που θυμίζει την αύξηση της τιμής που πληρώνουμε σε εταιρείες όπως η Uber ή αεροπορικές εταιρείες σε περιόδους αιχμής.Το σκεπτικό της Εισφοράς είναι να παρακινεί τις κυβερνήσεις των πλεονασματικών χωρών να ενισχύσουν τις εγχώριες δαπάνες και επενδύσεις τους ενώ, παράλληλα, να δίνει κίνητρα στις ελλειμματικές χώρες να κάνουν κράτει στις εισαγωγές. Οι αγορές συναλλάγματος θα το λάβουν αυτό υπόψη τους, προσαρμόζοντας ταχύτερα τις συναλλαγματικές ισοτιμίες ως απάντηση στις ανισορροπίες του ισοζυγίου τρεχουσών συναλλαγών και συγκρατώντας μεγάλο μέρος των κεφαλαιακών ροών που σήμερα εντείνουν τις ανισορροπίες. Όσον αφορά τη Χρέωση, στόχος της είναι να τιμωρεί τις κερδοσκοπικές εισροές ή εκροές κεφαλαίων, αυτόματα, χωρίς καμία εμπλοκή γραφειοκρατίας ή πολιτικών προσώπων.Ξαφνικά, οι συμμετέχουσες χώρες θα έχουν αποκτήσει όχι μόνο ένα σύστημα εξισορρόπησης αλλά κι ένα κοινό ταμείο, το ΚΑΤ, η δημιουργία του οποίου επιτυγχάνει δύο στόχους ταυτόχρονα: εξισορροπεί το παγκόσμιο εμπόριο και δημιουργεί νέα χρηματοδότηση για τη Δίκαιη Πράσινη Μετάβαση σε πλανητική κλίμακα.****Είναι κάτι τέτοιο εφικτό; Σίγουρα είναι. Η Κίνα διαθέτει το εμπορικό δίκτυο, την οικονομική επιφάνεια αλλά και την απαιτούμενη τεχνολογία, ιδίως την τεχνογνωσία σε εξελιγμένα ψηφιακά συστήματα πληρωμών. Την ίδια στιγμή, ο υπόλοιπος κόσμος έχει την επείγουσα ανάγκη για ένα εμπορικό σύστημα που δημιουργεί σταθερότητα και, αντί για ανισορροπίες και εκμετάλλευση, προωθεί την αμοιβαία ευημερία.Δεν θα ήταν υπέροχη ειρωνεία αν το Τραμπικό Δόγμα του Σοκ, το οποίο ο Υπουργός Οικονομικών του το δικαιολογεί ως προσπάθεια εξισορρόπησης της παγκόσμιας οικονομίας, οδηγούσε την Κίνα στο να αποδεχτεί την πρόκληση, συντονιζόμενη με χώρες σε όλο τον κόσμο, όχι μόνο με τις BRICS, να οικοδομήσει το πολυμερές σύστημα που είχε οραματιστεί ο Κέινς το 1944, αλλά το οποίο απορρίφθηκε ώστε οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες να κυριαρχήσουν στον κόσμο για άλλες οκτώ δεκαετίες;

Το άρθρο αυτό που στα ελληνικά δημοσιεύτηκε στην ΕφΣυν αποτελεί απόδοση στα ελληνικά της μηνιαίας στήλης του Γ. Βαρουφάκη στο ειδησεογραφικό πρακτορείο Quangcha στην Σαγκάη.

The post Ένα κινεζικό νέο Μπρέτον Γουντς; – Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών 2 Ιουνίου 2025 appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Trump Wants Big Tech to Own the Dollar – Project Syndicate op-ed

The IMF-World Bank Spring meetings are usually placid affairs that participating central bankers wish to forget soon after they are over. Not this Spring. This April the feeling several central bankers brought back home with them was not the usual relief but something far more visceral: dread, terror even. The reason? The spectre of the Genius Act—the U.S. stablecoin bill barrelling toward law in 2025, hot on the heels of Donald Trump’s January 23 executive order heralding a strategic cryptocurrency reserve.Central bankers have hitherto seen cryptocurrencies as a nuisance whose upside is that, thankfully, they lack the capacity to cause serious raptures in the architecture of the monetary systems under their care. They no longer think now that President Trump’s team are counting on cryptocurrencies pegged to the dollar as part of their strategy to rejig the global monetary system.What unsettled central bankers this Spring wasn’t just the policy itself, but its implications: a deliberate, chaotic unravelling of the 20th century’s monetary order where central banks reigned as the sole architects of money. The Genius Act doesn’t just allow private stablecoins—it prohibits central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), anointing corporate-issued tokens as the new guardians of dollar hegemony. This isn’t innovation; it’s a hostile takeover of money itself. Lacking anything resembling serious regulation, stablecoins are neither stable nor merely an alternative dollar payment option. They are a Trojan horse for the full privatisation of money.The European Central Bank sees the danger. If securities migrate to blockchain, with bonds, stocks, and derivatives becoming tokenised, then settlement must follow. The ECB’s solution is a tokenised euro, ensuring public money remains the bedrock of finance. So far, the ECB had to face down resistance to this plan from the German and French banks who seek to maintain the status quo. Now, the ECB has another, a bigger headache: the spectacle of Washington racing in the opposite direction. By banning CBDCs and greenlighting stablecoins, Trump’s team do not just reject public digital money—they also outsource dollar supremacy to the darkest forces within Big Tech.The irony is grotesque. The same libertarians who rail against government are now begging the state to anoint their stablecoins as de facto official currency. Worse, they demand access to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet—allowing private issuers to back their tokens with central bank reserves. Imagine a world where Tether, Circle, or Elon Musk’s X Coin enjoys the implicit backing of the US Treasury while operating outside banking regulations. This isn’t just regulatory arbitrage; it’s monetary feudalism.Lest we forget, there is a reason 19th century America was a monetary dystopia: thousands of wildcat banks issuing private notes, regular panics leaving the public, the working class in particular, holding worthless paper. Even J.P. Morgan was so appalled and threatened that he decided to strongarm the federal government and other bankers to establish the Federal Reserve as a public institution with a remit to stabilise money.Now, we’re hurtling backward. The Genius Act, whose final draft we have not seen yet, could unleash a digital wildcat era, where stablecoins—pegged to the dollar but controlled by private actors—flood the globe with digital pseudo dollars. Even if well-intentioned stablecoins, like Circle’s USDC or Tether’s USDT, are run by privateers who stand no chance of maintaining their tokens’ dollar peg once their volume escalates after they receive the official imprimatur of the federal authorities. In what must surely constitute the grossest example of truth reversal, President Trump’s executive order ill-defines stablecoins as instruments that will “promote and protect the sovereignty of the US dollar.” Loosely translated this calls upon shady privateers to flood the world with private dollar proxies, ensuring that even if nations ditch the greenback, they’ll still be trapped in its digital shadow.Europe is scrambling. The ECB, realising the existential threat, is fast-tracking a ‘wholesale CBDC’—a digital euro for institutional use that acts as a stopgap: a quick and dirty hybrid system syncing traditional payments with blockchain, buying time until true atomic settlement can be pushed past the vicious resistance of private bankers.But it may already be too late. While Europe dithers with committees, the US is acting. The Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has already driven Tether out of Europe—not because MiCA is too strict, but because the European Union’s political leadership still does not grasp the stakes. If stablecoins become the default money of crypto markets, DeFi, and emerging economies, the ECB’s half-baked digital euro will arrive to a battlefield where the war is already lost.Meanwhile developing countries face a brutal choice. Already choking under the dollar’s dominance, they must now either ban stablecoins (thus forfeiting access to crypto capital flows) or create their own to compete with the dollar’s network effects. A third, unappetising alternative, is to surrender to a new – even more perilous – form of de facto dollarisation.The only central bank that has planned ahead of this tsunami is China’s, along with some of the rest of the BRICS. Having the luxury of its own, already functioning digital yuan, China’s central bank can afford to refuse lending legitimacy to stablecoins by regulating them, preferring to ban them altogether to be on the safe side. But this sensible defiance leaves one gigantic dilemma still unanswered: China’s accumulated savings of approximately $4.5 trillion held by public and private institutions. Should they dump them, thus giving a boost to the Trump team’s plan to devalue the dollar? Or hold them, thus remaining exposed to the turbulence that Trump’s team is so adept at stirring up?In the longer term, the real danger that looms is a bifurcation that fuels geo-monetary tensions, in addition to the existing geopolitical and geo-economic ones. Two parallel monetary systems seem to be heading for a clash: One made of public monies issued in China, India and, maybe, the Eurozone. And another comprising private money, increasingly dominated by dollar-pegged stablecoins colonising the dollar zone.Is it any wonder that, this Spring, dread was the order of the day as our central bankers boarded their planes to return from Washington?

For the Project Syndicate site click here.

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Exposing Keir Starmer’s military spending scam – interview with Declassified UK

Just days into his premiership, Keir Starmer announced the commissioning of a “root and branch” Strategic Defence Review (SDR), writes Kate Hudson. Under the leadership of Lord Robertson, former defence secretary and NATO secretary general, the review panel claims to have broken with tradition, by including a much wider range of participants than usual – like former US presidential adviser Fiona Hill – and encouraging submissions from pretty much anybody.A better break with the past would have been a reassessment of whether the current policies are actually working, and whether the large amounts of cash involved could actually be better spent on something else. In recent days, Lord Robertson has said that the SDR will be “bolder and more radical” than previous versions, and will inspire our friends and intimidate our enemies. We await the review with bated breath. It’s generally been assumed that the SDR will be looking to justify “defence” spending increases, from the current 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% from 2027 to the end of the current parliament. Controversially, the government has already announced that this increase will be funded by slashing international aid spending.The intention is then to increase spending to 3% in the next parliament, although it’s highly unlikely that the current prime minister will be making the decisions at that point. It’s hard to see, as plenty of military types have pointed out, that this level of increase will enable some massive root and branch transformation of our supposedly “hollowed-out” armed forces. But that isn’t really the point. Tired old policy The reality is that this Labour SDR is a continuation of the same tired old “nukes plus NATO” policy of the last 75 years. Yes, there are likely to be some new technological knobs on it, like the promised £1bn to develop technology to “speed up decisions on the battlefield”.There will also be a new Digital Targeting Web to “better connect soldiers on the ground with key information provided by satellites, aircraft and drones helping them target enemy threats faster”. What could possibly go wrong? But the real problem is that the government is starting in the wrong place: more military spending, more emphasis on militarisation within our society and “might makes right”, more resources to the “defence” industrial sector. And too many in the trade unions and on the left are buying into this – falling for the myth that spending on defence is jobs-rich and will boost the economy, and the old lie that if you want peace you should prepare for war. It’s beyond time to counter this disastrous narrative.With the NATO Secretary General calling for increases in military spending of more than 3.5% of GDP, European rearmament going into overdrive, and constant references to being war-ready, a new approach is crucial. We need to recognise that if we carry on in the same way, we will end up in a war that actually directly affects us, and that will likely end in nuclear weapons use.

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On Bloomberg Live discussing Technofeudalism with Mishal Husain

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In the EU nothing succeeds like gross failure: The astonishing case of Ursula von der Leyen – Der Freitag 29 MAY 2025

Failure, corruption and warmongering: Ursula von der Leyen is awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen for her contribution to the EU – because in Europe utter failure is not only tolerated, but celebrated!It is one of life’s guilty pleasures when one’s cynical prejudices are confirmed. One such moment, when I allowed myself a long, hard laugh, came as the news arrived that Ursula von der Leyen had been awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen for “her services to the unity of the Member States, in the containment of the pandemic, for the unity of the Union’s determination to defend itself against Russia — and for the impetus towards the Green Deal.” It was now official: In Brussels, nothing succeeds like gross failure and, even worse, nothing is rewarded more generously than corruption.Let me begin with the above rationale for the Prize: Mrs von der Leyen’s “impetus towards the Green Deal”. Can they be serious? Future historians will zero in on the so-called Green Deal as an example of what is wrong with the European Union: smoke and mirrors masquerading as majestic policy initiatives. Indeed, when it was announced, and after studying it carefully, I rushed out an article in The Guardian to warn against the Green Deal on two grounds: first, the money it promised to invest in the green transition was simply not there and, secondly, the heralded deal was rather… brown – in that it aimed at greenwashing far more than at greening Europe. Four years later, the Green Deal was declared a gross failure and was unceremoniously ditched in favour of Ursula von der Leyen’s next white elephant: the folly of building up a European military-industrial complex under the codenames Re-Arm Europe or SAFE.Why is it folly to think that von der Leyen’s Commission will spearhead a European military-industrial complex? For three reasons, as I have explained elsewhere. First, as in the case of the Green Deal, the money is not there and the EU cannot credibly commit to finding it given its steadfast refusal to form a proper fiscal union. Secondly, even if money were not a problem, the EU lacks the federal institutions to construct a top-down, paneuropean military-industrial complex, instead of the existing patchwork of nation-state based companies that compete with one another with the backing of their national governments. Thirdly, even if neither money nor a federal-like set of institutions were a problem, Europe would not be able (I hope!) to emulate the United States’ capacity to wage one war after the other to ensure a constant demand for weapons and munitions.Two terms as President of the European Commission, two gross and rather costly failures. But these failures would not be enough to burnish Mrs von der Leyen’s credentials and seal her rise to the lofty heights that justified granting her the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen. No, for that splendid Prize to be awarded, she needed to add certified corruption to her gross failure. Thankfully, she did!Showing a remarkable determination to break the law both in her own country, Germany, and in the European Union, Mrs von der Leyen succeeded in being sanctioned in both jurisdictions for treating the public with contempt in pursuit of her own interests. As Germany’s defence minister, she desperately tried to conceal her involvement in shady defence contracts by sabotaging the Bundestag’s investigation in the matter through the “illegal and deliberate” deletion of her phone contents. As European Commission President, the EU top court found her culpable of repeating the unlawful practice of deleting her phone records of illicit personal exchanges with heads of global corporations – on this occasion with the CEO of Pfizer with whom she negotiated, on Europe’s behalf, lucrative COVID-19 vaccine deals.With these findings pointing to despicable behaviour under her belt, and her majestic policy failures (the Green Deal, Re-Arm and SAFE) on hand, Ursula von der Leyen was almost a shoo in for the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen. Almost but not quite! To push through the finishing line she needed to add another credential to her curriculum vitae: she needed to become the cheerleader of Israel’s army. Thankfully for our European Commission President, the opportunity arose after Hamas attacked Israel on 7th October 2023. Immediately, Mrs von der Leyen sprang to action.Without any authority or authorisation – since neither foreign nor defence policy is in the purview of the Commission President – she landed in Tel Aviv, not as a campaigner for an immediate end to war crimes on all sides, nor as an ambassador of Peace & Reconciliation or as an advocate of International Law or as a believer in the simple idea that the Geneva convention is humanity’s last hope in the darkest of hours. No, she went there to pose in front of Israeli tanks poised to enter Gaza with the air of a proud cheerleader on Grand Final day. She went there as an enabler of the war crime of denying two million non-combatants water and food, as a cheerleader of an air force intentionally targeting people’s homes, as a facilitator of the war crime of transferring a million people to other parts of Gaza where they were also bombed.Thus, Mrs von der Leyen’s exhausting work was done, her triple whammy of failure-corruption-warmongering completed. She was now the prime candidate for the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, which she received gladly. Without a hint of irony, I believe that it was well deserved and fully consistent with that particular prize’s background and history. After all, whether deservedly or undeservedly, the long dead European Emperor whose name the Prize carries has, for many years now, been appropriated by the inanest of Europe’s leaders in a frantic search for self-aggrandisement. To make the point, let me take you back to a dull autumnal afternoon when two suited men exuding authority entered Aachen’s Cathedral.The calendar read September 15th 1978 and the two men were there to pay their respects to the remains of Charlemagne, the 9th Century Frankish King who had briefly re-united the Roman Empire and whose spirit encapsulated, for traditionalist Central Europeans, Pan-Europa or Mittel-Europa – a borderless Christian European realm.Standing above the Christian warrior’s grave, and next to his ancient throne, the two pilgrims sought to quell their considerable trepidation caused by what they had just done: commit their two countries, France and Germany, to bundle their money together with an agreement, they had signed earlier that day to create the so-called European Monetary System (EMS) – the euro’s precursor.“Perhaps while we were discussing monetary affairs”, said one of the two to an Italian journalist, “the spirit of Charlemagne brooded over us.” His name? President Valéry Giscard d’ Estaing of France. The second pilgrim appealing to Charlemagne’s ghost for its approval of the monetary union with France was German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.Setting aside the awful Euro-kitsch aesthetic of two leaders visiting the tomb of a Christian warrior king to steady their nerves over creating perhaps history’s most pathetic monetary union, it is heartening to realise that the EU has a long tradition of soap opera-like celebrations of failure. After all, the exchange rate mechanism that the two men established back then failed spectacularly but Europe still celebrates them to this day. As for the euro, which was born as a result of the calamity that was the EMS, it also proved a calamity for Europe and Europeans. And yet, in 2002, the committee awarding the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen chose to award that year’s prize to… the euro!In this European Union, where nothing succeeds like failure, especially when laced with corruption and most recently warmongering, Mrs von der Leyen is the most deserved recipient of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen.

For the DER FREITAG site, where the above was originally published in German, click here.

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How Europe’s sheer stupidity combined with its ethical downfall to underwrite Israel’s genocide of Palestinians – Middle East Eye

“A mixture of stupidity and nastiness… The liberal establishment is primarily responsible for the genocide of the Palestinians.” In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Yanis Varoufakis unleashes a fierce critique of Western liberalism, and tells us why he feels that the global system is in crisis. This episode explores the facade of Western moral superiority, the role of empire past and present, how liberal hypocrisy has given rise to fascism, the climate crisis, Gaza and why Varoufakis places his hope in the Global South. UNAPOLOGETIC is Hosted by Ashfaaq Carim Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:01 Western civilisation and its hypocrisy 04:27 Gaza, genocide and colonial legacies 10:09 2008: The collapse of capitalism 15:28 Technofeudalism and the rise of cloud capital 17:06 Trump’s tariffs and the new Nixon shock 21:18 Liberal complicity in Gaza 26:55 Europe’s civil liberties crackdown 29:59 Palestine and the loss of moral resistance 33:19 Why protesters lack hope in the West 38:56 China vs. Russia: A critical distinction 41:02 China’s authoritarianism vs. local democracy 44:42 Climate collapse and cloud capital 48:46 Organising after collapse: What’s the alternative? 50:00 Varoufakis’ vision for change

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Our New Economic World Order & Europe’s Suicide: In discussion with Glenn Diesen

The hitherto US-centric economic model has exhausted itself, and Trump’s government is pushing to restructure the international economic architecture to maintain US hegemony. China is the main rival in this new reality, while the Europeans are becoming an impoverished appendage to the US. The Europeans could chart a more favourable path forward, except that they lack the political structures, the collective action institutions and, sadly, the moral integrity to be able to think in terms of the interests of most Europeans.

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