Why #Europe needs to reverse the austerity #Germany has championed

Opinion: ‘Not only was Ireland bullied by the ECB into entering a programme, but a large chunk of the received funds was transferred straight to the financial sector and foreign creditors (including various German banks)’

Then taoiseach Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan, minister for finance, making a statement following the Cabinet meeting regarding the financial bailout in 2010. Photographer: Dara Mac Dónaill / THE IRISH TIMES

Germany, written off as the “sick man of Europe” when the euro was launched in 1999, is today considered by most – first and foremost by the Germans themselves – to be the continent’s most successful economy and a model for other countries to follow. But this is a dangerous misconception. As Matt O’Brien recently wrote in the Washington Post: “It doesn’t seem like it, but Germany is still the sick man of Europe. It’s just that everybody else is terminally ill now"... (Read more)

External Expansion, www.externalexpansion.net,

#Globalization Is in Retreat? Not So Fast

An automotive electronics production line in Wuhan, China. Credit Shepherd Zhou/European Pressphoto Agency

Not long ago, executives at the Dutch multinational Royal DSM, a globe-girdling maker of nutritional supplements and high-tech materials, used to require a battery of internal studies to decide where to do a deal or locate a new manufacturing plant... (Read more)

External Expansion, www.externalexpansion.net,

Ireland: Manufacturing prices rise 0.3% in June as export sales increase

Lates CSO figures give mixed picture of industrial inflation

 

 

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Businesses Need to Spend More. The Future of the Economy Depends on It.

Turning Profits Into Productivity 

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