Cheap cigarettes are burning a hole on Greece’s finances
Bloomberg — On an unremarkable morning on Stournari street in downtown Athens, just a few blocks away from the epicenter of every riot the city […]
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Europe’s refugee story has hardly begun
The Guardian / Paul Mason — The refugee story has hardly begun. There will be, on conservative estimates, another million arriving via Turkey this year […]
Why we’re not safe from Grexit yet
Politico — Almost exactly a year after Syriza rocked the Greek political establishment by winning the January 2015 general elections, international news outlets have all […]
FT, May 2014: Inside Europe’s (Secret) Plan Z
In May 2014, just before the European elections, FT’s Peter Spiegel revealed Europe’s secret plan, codenamed Z, about how to handle a Grexit. The plan […]
Varoufakis speaks about Plan X and its rejection
eKathimerini — Yanis Varoufakis was instructed last year by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to put together a small team of people to draw up a […]
Greece: a European tragedy
Bruegel.org /Ashoka Mody — From 2009 to 2015, the Greek government’s primary deficit (deficit not counting interest payments) declined from 10 percent of GDP to […]
Yanis Varoufakis – Greece’s two currencies
Project Syndicate — Imagine a depositor in the US state of Arizona being permitted to withdraw only small amounts of cash weekly and facing restrictions […]
Paul Mason’s #ThisIsACoup – Episode 4 – SURRENDER OR DIE
Final episode of our four-part series telling the story of the European Union’s confrontation with the Greek Syriza party in 2015. With unprecedented access to […]
Merkel named TIME Person of the Year, beating Al-Baghdadi, Putin and Trump
Time magazine has named Angela Merkel as its person of the year, making her the first woman to receive the accolade in the past 29 […]
Greece’s five ticking time bombs
Bloomberg View — Remember the Greek crisis? Last time we checked in, a newly mandated Greek government reached an agreement with creditors and the country was on […]
Tagesspiegel: Greece, a country of unemployed and pensioners
Greece is a country of unemployed people and pensioners, as only one in three Greeks is an active member in the economy, says a Tagesspiegel […]
The man who funds ISIS
ZeroHedge — Russia’s Sergey Lavrov is not one foreign minister known to mince his words. Just 24 hours after a Russian fighter was brought down […]
How Greek shipowners talk up their role, and why that costs Athens millions
Reuters — The magnates who run one of the biggest merchant marine fleets in the world have long argued that if Greece tried to tax […]
Greece’s crisis 30 years ago
This article first appeared in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit on April 18, 1986. German holidaymakers would probably lose their appetites if they learned the […]
In the space of 13 days, Isil destroyed a Russian airliner, bombed Beirut and brought carnage to Paris
The Telegraph — Among the many terrible facts about the bloodshed in Paris, one stands out. No terrorist group has ever previously inflicted the combination […]