This week’s recommended blogs #4

• Time lapse at Everest – Elia Saikaly (Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)
• Best-selling Books of All Time (aBookShelfz)
• The next big (faux) scandal (Brobrubel’s Blog)
• Individualism and Collectivism (shakemyheadhollow)
• Greece: Closure of ERT has become an issue of Democracy (Emanuel Raptis)

Coming up on Czerulf’s Thoughts

Documentary – Catastroika

I post the documentary ‘Catastroika’ here because I think it is important. It is important because what goes on in Greece is not without precedent. It happened before and it will happen somewhere else. It happens for a reason.

Greece and the EU – Democracy and Sovereignty

One of the main concerns of this blog has been the promotion and advocacy of democratic principles. Events need to be measured against them regardless where and when they have taken place. The way the sovereign debt crises in Greece has been dealt with poses lots of questions in this regard. One of them is whether or not Greek sovereignty has been violated. See also my article Greece – first injury then insult.

Italy – Labour reforms need to tackle youth unemployment

I recently came across an interesting article with the title Dangermen – Labour reform in Italy which laid out the many challenges the new Italian prime minister Mario Monti has to face. One of the most pressing problems is the unacceptable high unemployment rate among young people (15-24 years old) which is above 30 percent in Italy with Portugal, Spain and Greece performing evenly badly or worst (see link for graph). He is pushing for reforms to make the labour market more flexible and to encourage companies to take on new employees. This won’t be easy. He is up against all sorts of interests that benefit from the status quo and therefore seek to preserve it.

Greece – First injury then insult

No doubt, Greece is in a precarious situation. Years of easy money, poor economic performance and an appalling level of governmental mismanagement have pushed the country right to the brink of collapse. To get out of this mess won’t be easy. It is going to be a painful journey. Nobody knows that better than the Greeks themselves. They also know that they need assistance. To ask for help is seldom easy and often distressing. The so-called Troika (IMF, ECB, EU) added insult to injury with the way it bullied the Greek government under Lucas D. Papademos into a deal which most economists agree will not work, because it is based on assumptions that are far too optimistic. Greece is expected to grow vigorously by 2014 out of tin air.