Pace University - Room W615
551 5th Ave New York, N.Y. 10176
Mar 06, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:50 AM (GMT-5)
Host:
Left Forum conference
The Eurozone crisis is being used to justify the erosion of workers' rights and the implementation of policies that would increase unemployment and have devastating ripple effects on the global economy for years to come. The conventional wisdom of key international institutions holds that European governments’ excessive spending on social safety nets created unsustainable levels of debt that ultimately brought about the crisis.
But the crisis was precipitated, in large part, by the same institutional failures that caused the financial crisis in the United States, including lax regulations on reckless bankers and a housing bubble.
The current failure of the European Central Bank to guarantee countries’ debts, combined with austerity policies demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, have created a downward spiral that merely exacerbates the crisis.
This panel, part of the larger Left Forum conference, critically examined the assumptions made by these institutions and propose more effective policies and actions that could be taken to halt the crisis and prevent its spread to the rest of the world.
Participants included:
- Doug Henwood—Left Business Observer
- Costas Panayotakis—CUNY
- Mark Weisbrot—Center for Economic and Policy Research
More information can be found on the conference website.
