Juggling Dynamite

After more than a decade of extreme government and central bank interventions in financial markets and institutions all over the world, policies and actions are increasingly coming under a much needed scrutiny. This is a key step toward reigning in what has been a runaway finance sector and remind policy makers that their fiduciary duty as elected and appointed officials, is not owed to profit-maximizing banks, but to the taxpayers and citizens of the country.

The pendulum seems to be finally swinging back toward fiscal restraint, aversion to debt, and democratic accountability. Recent attention on the negotiations in Greece are one example. This interesting case in Canada, is another. See: The Canadian court case the mainstream media won’t cover.

In this recent case, Canadians sued the Bank of Canada and won. Here is a direct video link.

For more background on Canadian constitutional lawyer, Rocco Galati, who argued the case, see The Globe’s recent interview with him here: The lawyer who challenged the Harper Government and won.

This panel discussion is long and detailed, but well worth the time. Especially the second half. The most relevant and insightful comments I have heard in some time. Enjoy.

The Global Minotaur: The Crash of 2008 and the Euro-Zone Crisis in Historical Perspective. Panel discussion with Yanis Varoufakis & Justin Fox; Chair: Mark Mazower, Wednesday, 9 November, 2011. Here is a direct video link.

The newly appointed Greek Finance Minister has been writing and speaking about the European crisis for years as an academic. He wrote a paper proposing steps to resolve the Euro crisis in July 2013, with University of Texas colleague James Galbraith. You can read it here: A Modest Proposal for Resolving the Eurozone Crisis, Version 4.0.

In a special report for Channel 4 News in 2012, Varoufakis confronted the popular narrative that characterizes Greeks as lazy grasshoppers and northern Europeans as the hardworking ants. The true grasshoppers, Varoufakis explains, are the investment banks who created the global credit crisis and then bailed themselves out by shackling working people all over with impossible debt levels.  Here is a direct video link.

In 2011, Varoufakis also sat down with Steve Paikin to discuss the evolving economic order in Europe and America, including why he had no intention of becoming Greek finance minister…LOL. Here is a direct video link.

Varoufakis understands the issues, the math, and viable solutions better than most other commentators and politicians. Of course the banking cartel don’t like his assessment of their pivotal role as architects of the great financial crisis, nor his insistence that they must admit they made bad loans and write off and restructure debt, as a critical part of resolving the European crisis. Other European countries, also buried in debt the past decade, are watching all of this very closely. On an international level, we are now hearing the most honest discussion of the true factors behind the 2008 financial crisis, seen to date.

This is progress. At long last, we could be approaching our generation’s much needed Pecora commission-like epiphany about the need to bring back Glass-Steagall divisions in the global banking system, and force the debt genie back into the bottle once more.