Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Heading for a lost decade? Latin lessons for Europe

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Heading for a lost decade? Latin lessons for Europe

Click here to access article by Jerome Roos from Reflections on a Revolution.

The author looks at various debt crises from the 1930s until today in order to understand why different solutions have been used by governing elites to deal with the crises. He especially is interested in teasing out the answer to this question:

...if default was still considered a legitimate policy response in the 1930s, and proved to be such a fiscal catharsis in Argentina in 2001, then why did Latin America not default en masse in the 1980s — and why does Southern Europe not default en masse today?

His arguments and evidence he offers provide some illuminating insights that, for me, are very convincing given my background knowledge of the effects of the greater concentration of wealth and power in recent times. Furthermore, having read many of Roos's articles over the past two years, I have been impressed with his very credible analyses of political-economic events in Europe.