American workers’ economic productivity continues to grow much faster than their pay, according to a new study published Wednesday. This divergence, the study asserts, is a key contributor to the widening income gap that both political parties have focused on during the runup to the presidential election.
The study, conducted by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), finds that from 2000 to 2014, American workers’ total productivity increased 21.6 percent, while the median worker’s compensation, including pay and benefits, rose just 1.8 percent.
The new data continue a trend that goes back decades. From 1973 to 2014, American worker productivity increased 72.2 percent while median worker compensation rose just 8.7 percent. From 1948 to 1973, by contrast, typical worker compensation and productivity grew at roughly the same rate.
Note: This graph measures the growth of average hourly compensation of production/nonsupervisory workers, since it is the only reliable proxy for median compensation that is available going back to 1948. As a result, the numbers in the graph differ slightly from those cited earlier in the story.
Productivity measures the amount of GDP, or economic activity, a worker generates per hour worked. Politicians sometimes claim that boosting productivity is the secret to improving Americans’ living standards, but many economists argue that increased productivity alone has little value unless it is accompanied by growth in wages and benefits.
The causes of the disparity between wages and productivity, the EPI report says, are policies that favor stockholders and corporate executives over workers.
Specifically, two changes that have depressed median worker pay since 1973 are to blame for the vast majority of the growing productivity-pay gap, the report says. A greater share of wealth has gone to capital owners, rather than into worker compensation. And, to the extent that compensation has increased, a disproportionate share of the gains has gone to top executives and managers, who represent a small fraction of the overall workforce.
"The fact that, for decades, productivity and pay tracked each other, and then that link was broken rather suddenly in the late 1970s, is clearly reflective of policy decisions," said Josh Bivens, the EPI’s research and policy director and one of the paper’s co-authors. "We switched to a policy regime … that intentionally shifted bargaining power away from low- and moderate-wage workers to corporate managers, capital owners and a very narrow slice of privileged workers at the top."
Policy culprits include the failure to raise the minimum wage enough to keep pace with inflation or to adapt labor laws to make it less difficult for workers to unionize, the paper's authors say. They also point to economic policymakers' abandonment of full employment as a policy priority.
“What’s really important to recognize is that we got no growth bonanza as a result of this policy shift,” Bivens said.
However, “policy changes made on behalf of those with the most income, wealth and power” are reversible, said Lawrence Mishel, the EPI’s president and the paper’s co-author. He suggested that people who want to benefit more from productivity growth need to assert themselves democratically and make raising wages, benefits and the quality of available jobs more of a priority for politicians putting out policy platforms.
The authors cautioned that the Federal Reserve shouldn’t raise interest rates, as it is rumored to be considering, until wages are growing twice as fast as they are now. Any rate increase before the end of the year, Bivens said, would harm wage growth.
A high school dropout, the Virgin Group founder began in 1973 with Virgin Records, which became the biggest independent label record in the world. Now, Virgin Group now employs more than 50,000 people in more than 50 countries. Branson's entrepreneurship even led to his being knighted in 1999.
Here are some of our favorite, inspiring Branson quotes:
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama famously declared an end to history. Things, of course, would continue to happen, he said, but the clash of rival ideologies was over with the "unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism."
It was 1992, and it was a time to celebrate. "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government," he wrote in his landmark essay-turned-book.
With Germany and the eurozone squeezing the life out of Greece in a deal that forces the country to surrender to all of its creditors' demands, it has become clearer than ever that only one half of that victory remains alive: neoliberal economics.
Monday's deal between Greece and its creditors makes a mockery of the ruling Syriza government's democratic mandate for economic relief, which was reinforced by a July 5 referendum vote in which Greek voters rejected a deal that was far more moderate than the current one. The popularity of the hashtag #ThisIsACoup on Sunday expressed the view of many Greeks and citizens around the world that democracy had died in the negotiating room at the hands of Greece's creditors.
Within just a few years of Fukuyama's pronouncement, protesters in Western nations and governments and people in the global South began suggesting that the new democratic system was, in the end, perhaps not so democratic. The International Monetary Fund and other global creditors began writing laws, mostly for Third World countries, enforcing what they called "structural adjustment" -- which was bloodless bureaucratic language referring to the pillaging of a nation's assets and resources, coupled with the gutting of its social services, pensions and other advances that came in the 20th century. The first major protest to capture global attention was in Seattle, Washington, at a World Trade Organization meeting in 1999. The movement spread around the globe, with protests hitting capital after capital, wherever economic leaders gathered, until the attacks of September 11, 2001. A planned protest against the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C., was supplanted by a peace march.
Posted by We are all Greeks on Sunday, July 12, 2015
This popular meme was among the tamer expressions of anger on the “We are all Greeks” Facebook page.
The world's rich nations assumed that what institutions like the IMF did in the South wouldn't hit the North. Capital, however, marched on. And on Sunday night, it marched into Athens with an offer to Greece that would end the idea that capitalism and democracy can survive together there. The final deal, released on Monday by the institutions of the European financial elite, states: "The [Greek] government needs to consult and agree with the institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament."
Not only would the Greek people be forced to accept the kind of deal they rejected overwhelmingly at the polls just a week earlier, but they'd be blocked from implementing any future policies Germany disapproved of.
"The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism," Fukuyama wrote. But, instead, the absence of a viable alternative emboldened capital: with the threat of socialism gone, there is less need for either half of what's known in Europe as "social democracy."
The sad reality of #Greece & #Europe : Its not long now until historians draw a parallel with historical episodes of “gunboat diplomacy.”
— Mohamed A. El-Erian (@elerianm) July 13, 2015
In a previous interview with HuffPost, French economist Thomas Piketty highlighted the interaction. "The existence of a counter model was one of the reasons that a number of reforms or policies were accepted," he said, arguing that people in capitalist countries fared better thanks to the threat of communism. "In France, it's very striking to see that in 1920, the political majorities adopted steeply progressive taxation. Exactly the same people refused the income tax in 1914 with a 2 percent tax rate. And in between, the Bolshevik revolution made them feel, after all, that progressive taxation is not so dangerous as revolution."
During negotiations over the future of Greece, the Greek Syriza government repeatedly offered progressive taxation as a way of achieving some of the budget surpluses the institutions demanded. However, the institutions argued that higher taxes on the rich might slow growth and rejected the offer. With no fear of revolution, the interest in progressive taxation is gone.
Paul Krugman put the blame squarely on Germany in a recent op-ed entitled "Killing the European Project":
The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.
On Monday morning, the details of the final deal forced on Greece confirmed skeptics’ worst fears. For the privilege of remaining in a currency union that has already devastated Greece’s economy, Greece must surrender what remains of its financial sovereignty. In exchange for rescue loans of 82-86 billion euros, the Greek government has been forced to agree to an even larger package of pension cuts and tax increases than those its citizens have already rejected.
But the most humiliating part of the agreement is a forced fire-sale privatization of Greece’s state-owned assets that will raise 50 billion euros. The sales will be ensured by strict eurozone monitoring. An apparent concession negotiated by French President François Hollande is that 12.5 billion euros of the returns from privatization -- one-quarter of the funds raised -- will be reinvested in the Greek economy.
And at the end of 2016, Greece will be required to beg the IMF for a new round of funding, something Greece has tried hard to avoid.
Greece did not receive significant debt restructuring, but will benefit from some longer payment periods and reduced interest rates. Much of the relief this would have offered was offset by the economic losses Greece has sustained from two weeks of capital controls that have closed its banks.
Ultimately, Germany’s willingness to force Greece out of the eurozone, and Greece’s unwillingness to risk the collapse of its banking system and the unknown economic consequences of a Grexit, have brought Greece to its knees. In the game of chicken between the two nations, Greece blinked first. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble -- long the creditors’ most powerful hardliner -- insisted until the end that Greece be temporarily forced out of the monetary union. That put Hollande and eurozone leaders in the position to play the good cop in negotiations: They pushed the parties to keep Greece in the eurozone, but on more onerous terms than ever before.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is seen prior to the start of the Eurogroup meeting scheduled in the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday. Schäuble's support for a temporary Grexit contribute to the pressure on Greece to submit to creditors' demands. (Thierry Charlier/AFP/Getty Images)
A Financial Times account of the marathon negotiations was replete with anecdotes of the browbeating that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras endured. Finance ministers from Finland and Slovenia took the opportunity to hector and shame Tsipras. A senior eurozone official reported, “They crucified Tsipras in there. Crucified.”
Indeed, the most decisive result of the final deal may be the collapse of Greece’s democratically elected government. Tsipras was able to push an earlier version of the deal, drafted with the help of French officials, through Greece’s Parliament on Friday night. Even then, Tsipras suffered a handful of defections from within his party, including Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, whom Tsipras will reportedly soon dismiss from his post. By Sunday, with the onerous terms of the new deal coming to light, senior Syriza members and legislators from their right-populist coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, were in open revolt. It is unclear whether Tsipras will be able to get the new deal through Parliament with his current coalition.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks with the media after a meeting of eurozone heads of state at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday. Tsipras has agreed to a new bailout deal that accedes to virtually of the creditors' demands. One European official present in negotiations said that the other European leaders had "crucified" Tsipras. (AP Photo/Francois Walschaerts)
If Tsipras’ government does collapse, it will be by design. Even before Greece’s July 5 referendum, European leaders openly mused about their desire to force Syriza from power. They have decided to make an example of Greece to show that European citizens can elect governments with an anti-austerity agenda, but Germany and Europe’s wealthy countries will be able to dictate what those governments can actually do -- and whether they can stay in power.
The German government argues that the bailout deal is consistent with European ideals of democracy and sovereignty. But in a press briefing in Washington on Monday, Peter Wittig, the German ambassador to the United States, admitted that the broader sovereignty of the European Union sometimes contradicts the wishes of voters in individual eurozone nations. The “shared sovereignty” of the European Union “entails tensions,” Wittig said. “In some instances, this shared sovereignty conflicts with the wishes of some citizens.”
The United States has done precious little to support Greece or the principle of democracy in Europe. The Soviet Union may be gone, but the U.S. reluctance to intervene stems largely from its desire to keep Germany as a strong ally while the U.S. wages a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
If European history is any guide, the too-clever calculations and the petty vindictiveness will backfire in a bad way.
As Rena Dourou, a member of Syriza, wrote for HuffPost Greece on Sunday:
Greece is at a crossroads, between Europe, the Balkans, the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East -- between the West and the East. It is at the junction of important geostrategic interests. It is situated in an area where the established interests of the great powers are pitted against those of rising regional powers, against the backdrop of a reemergence of blind religious fundamentalism, in the form of the Islamic State -- a serious menace to universal human rights and a threat to the principles and values of rationalism. The weakening of a country in this specific area and under these specific circumstances would constitute not just a failure, but a choice with grave strategic consequences.
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CHENGDU -- The Shanghai stock market has been one wild ride for the last few months. The world has watched as stocks soared for months before a precipitous plunge in recent weeks. Millions of "novice investors" got involved in the markets when prices dramatically increased last year, the Associated Press reported.
So what do normal Chinese people think about the roller coaster markets, now that they're in a meltdown?
To find out, we surveyed a few people in the southwestern city of Chengdu. Best known for its spicy food and beautiful women, Chengdu isn’t exactly the epicenter of rabid financial speculation. Here’s what Chengdu residents had to say about the raucous Shanghai stock market.
Lin Liuzhi, 55, retired
Do you or your family play the stock market? I’ve never bought stocks but my daughter bought a few. She lost money but not that much. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Not very much. My daughter might pay more attention. Will the stock market recover? That’s really hard to say. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It won’t really affect me because I don’t buy stocks and my daughter didn’t buy that many stocks.
Li Zheng, 60, retired
Do you or your family play the stock market? I never get involved with the Chinese stock market because of the way people play it. Ordinary Chinese people are just gambling on stocks. They don’t look at the real value of the companies when they invest. When things look good they rush in, when things look bad they run away. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Yea, I’ve been watching it a bit. Will the stock market recover? Right now this situation has nothing to do with the real value. They talk about capital markets, but I’ve been observing it for 10 years and I don’t know what the real value is. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It won’t affect me. I’m already retired. I just need my pension to go up a bit every year, and that isn’t connected to the stock markets. This year, salaries have been going up, but that’s because the economy is growing, not because the stock market is growing. The stock market was only growing because of the strategies people used. It’s separate from the real economy.
Mr. Jiang, 33, small business owner
Do you or your family play the stock market? I don’t, but my mom does. She’s played the markets for a long time, but she sold all of her stocks before it crashed. It was really lucky. She made around 200,000 RMB (about $32,000). Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Yep. Will the stock market recover? I don’t know, but if it does my mom will get back in. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? It doesn’t influence me personally, but it influences my family.
Xiao Jinhua, 32, manager at Peter’s Tex Mex
Do you or your family play the stock market? I don’t have stocks, but some of my friends do. Some have been playing for a couple years. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? Recently it’s been falling, so I started to wonder why it dropped. But overall I’m not that interested. Will the stock market recover? I don’t really have much concept of the market. All I have is a feeling because I’ve never really gotten involved in buying and selling. According to some friends it’s not going to go up much in the short term, but I don’t know why. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? Yes, it will. If people don’t have money then they won’t spend it at places like this. I think there will be some impact.
Hu Wei, left.
Hu Wei, 23, salesman
Do you or your family play the stock market? Never. But I’ve noticed that lots of girls play the stock market. Have you been paying attention to news about the stock market? No. I don’t understand it so why would I pay attention? Will the stock market recover? I have no idea. Will the turmoil in the stock market affect your life? Not at all. Out in this city we won’t feel the effects.
After decades of judging and shaming mothers for "abandoning" their kids while they went off to work to commit the horrible and selfish act of providing for their families, Americans are now overwhelmingly OK with working mothers, according to a paper published in the latest edition of Psychology of Women quarterly.
The study, from researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Georgia, looked at nationally representative survey data from the 1970s through 2013, and found big cultural shifts. In 1977, 68 percent of U.S. adults believed "a preschool child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works," compared to 42 percent in 1998 and 35 percent in 2012. (A recent study found that, actually, having a working mother can have a very positive impact on a child.)
Younger adults were even more supportive of working mothers. The new study found that just 22 percent of high school seniors surveyed from 2010 to 2013 said they believe a child suffers when his or her mother works.
So that's cool. But the thing is, public policy and most private employers haven't caught up to changing attitudes. The U.S. still remains the only democratic nation on the planet without any paid parental leave.
"The reality is, most women with young children are in the workplace," said Jean Twenge, the author of "Generation Me" and a psychology professor at San Diego State University who worked on the new research paper. "Yet among industrialized nations, we don't compare very well in terms of the support we give working families for daycare and preschool."
Nothing much has changed at the federal level since the U.S. passed a law requiring employers to offer 12 weeks of unpaid leave for caretakers in 1993. "I don't feel like we've made any progress [on family leave] since then," Anne Weisberg, a senior vice president at the nonprofit research group the Families and Work Institute, told The Huffington Post.
A very young-looking Bill Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave act in 1993.
One of the big objections to paid leave traditionally comes from businesses, which tend to argue that offering workers paid leave increases costs. But a mounting pile of evidence doesn't support that theory. Nearly 90 percent of California businesses reported no cost increases due to the state's now 10-year-old leave law, according to one survey. In fact, 43 percent of businesses in the state reported a cost savings, because they were able to hold on to more workers (decreasing training costs) and reduce spending on benefits.
Other companies, like Google, have also increased employee retention by increasing paid leave.
Oh, and paid leave saves the government money and disproportionately helps lower-income women. In New Jersey, women who took paid leave were around 40 percent less likely to receive public benefits like food stamps or welfare, according to a Rutgers study cited by Claire Cain Miller in The New York Times.
So what's taking policymakers and business leaders so long to catch up?
First, not all attitudes have shifted, said Weisberg. "We still have a lot of ambivalence about gender roles. Even though most people say they believe women should work outside the home, we know for a fact that there's a lot of maternal bias when it comes to hiring women, promoting women."
Despite what the new study found about shifting attitudes, a 2013 survey from Pew found a majority of Americans still believe it's better for children if the mother stays home. "They don't say the same thing if the dad stays home," Weisberg said.
She also noted that most Americans view having children as a "choice" -- not a societal good. That prevents us from supporting parents at the policy level. Yet if we don't, Weisberg said we could wind up like Japan, a country that offers little policy support for working mothers. Increasingly, young women there are choosing not to have children. The country's birth rate is currently below replacement levels, which could have devastating consequences for Japan's economy.
Of course, there's also the classic American aversion to taxes and spending money on social reform. And there's the issue of who's in charge of making change. Though women make up a huge part of the workforce, they're still largely missing from the corner office -- and from the political sphere.
"Very few members of Congress, I suspect, have dropped a child off at day care," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said recently, speaking of paid family leave. "Very few members of Congress know exactly how much day care costs, because they didn't pay those bills. And so for a lot of members of Congress, they don't relate to the issue -- either because they have enormous wealth so they have unlimited caregivers, or they're men whose wives chose to stay at home and they had the resources to do that."
Still, some progress is happening. Gillibrand's Family Act, which proposes financing paid leave through a small payroll tax, isn't totally dead yet. California, New Jersey and Rhode Island now offer paid parental leave. Other states are considering it.
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has affirmed her support for universal pre-K.
Businesses also are waking up to the idea that their workers have needs outside the office. Companies are increasingly offering more and better paid leave, on-site childcare and other support for employees. Still, those benefits are typically for higher-paid, white-collar workers.
Only 13 percent of employers in the U.S. offer paid leave to full-time workers, according to the most recent data from the Labor Department. Women in low-wage jobs, a fast-growing group, suffer disproportionately from a lack of support for paid leave.
And for them, the stakes are getting higher. "We are really reaching a breaking point," said Weisberg. "Stress levels are increasing, especially among working women." She pointed out that life expectancy for women has actually been falling in recent years, and she speculated that stress among lower-income women could play a role.
ATHENS/FRANKFURT, July 6 (Reuters) - Greece's outspoken finance minister resigned on Monday, removing one major obstacle to any deal to keep Athens in the euro zone after Greeks voted resoundingly to back the government in rejecting the austerity terms of a bailout.
Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras promised German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Greece would bring a proposal for a cash-for-reforms deal to an emergency summit of euro zone leaders on Tuesday, a Greek official said. It was unclear how much it would differ from other proposals rejected in the past.
Gloomy officials in Brussels and Berlin said a Greek exit from the currency area now looked ever more likely.
But they also said talks to avert it would be easier without Yanis Varoufakis, an avowed "erratic Marxist" economist who infuriated his fellow euro zone finance ministers with an informal style and hectoring lectures. He had campaigned for Sunday's 'No' vote, accusing Greece' creditors of "terrorism."
"I was made aware of a certain 'preference' by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my... 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement," Varoufakis said in a statement.
His sacrifice suggested Tsipras is determined to try to reach a last-ditch compromise with European leaders.
Greece's political leaders, more accustomed to screaming abuse at each other in parliament, spent the day locked in talks at the president's office trying to produce an unprecedented national unity statement.
Greece's chief negotiator in aid talks with international creditors, Euclid Tsakalotos, a soft-spoken academic economist, was the frontrunner to become finance minister, Varoufakis said.
Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling said publicly what other euro zone figures had said in private: "Varoufakis was someone who massively destroyed trust through his name-calling and by repeatedly criticizing the institutions ... that's why I hope that the basis for talks will now be better."
To win any new deal, Greece will have to overcome the distrust of partners, above all Germany, Greece's biggest creditor and the EU's biggest economy, where public opinion has hardened in favor of cutting Greece loose from the euro.
Varoufakis had a particularly acrimonious relationship with Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. A German government spokesman, asked about the departure of Varoufakis, told reporters policies mattered more than people.
A woman withdraws money from an ATM machine next to a beggar and a graffiti reading' No to fear' in Thessaloniki on July 6, 2015. (SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP/Getty Images)
DEFIANCE
While jubilant Greeks celebrated their national gesture of defiance late into the night, there was gloom in Brussels.
European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis told a news conference there was no easy way out of the crisis and the referendum result had widened the gap between Greece and other euro zone countries.
Tsipras has also spoken by telephone to French President Francois Hollande, who is trying to broker an agreement ahead of Tuesday's Brussels summit. Hollande was due to meet later on Monday with Merkel in Paris to seek a joint response from the euro zone's two leading powers.
But an EU source said barring some major Greek concession, euro zone leaders were more likely to discuss a Greek exit, and how to reinforce the remaining currency union, than any new aid program for Athens on Tuesday.
While France and Italy have emphasized the importance of more talks, German public opinion is running out of patience.
Merkel's vice-chancellor, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, told a news conference: "If Greece wants to stay in the euro, the Greek government must quickly make a substantive offer that goes beyond its willingness thus far."
On Sunday he said Tsipras had torn down the last bridge for a compromise.
A German Finance Ministry spokesman brushed aside Greek demands for a big debt write-down, which the International Monetary Fund said last week may be necessary. He said the IMF was promoting its traditional stance but Europe had opted for solutions other than debt cuts to put countries back on track.
Bankers said the Greek government would issue a new decree on Monday extending for at least a few more days an eight-day-old bank closure that has crippled the economy. There were long lines at cash machines, where Greeks are rationed to withdrawing 60 euros a day, and 20-euro banknotes have started to run out.
Greece's immediate fate is in the hands of the European Central Bank, which has kept Greek banks open with a trickle of emergency cash. The ECB's policymaking governing council delayed until late afternoon a conference call to decide how long to go on keeping Greek banks afloat.
Several people familiar with ECB policy said it would probably reject a Greek request to raise a cap on emergency liquidity assistance and leave the limit unchanged, slowly tightening the noose but giving banks a few more days' air.
People celebrate in front of the Greek parliament as the people of Greece reject the debt bailout by creditors on July 6, 2015 in Athens, Greece. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
"BRAVE CHOICE"
After five years of economic crisis and mass unemployment, Greek electors voted 61.3 percent 'No' to the bailout conditions already rejected by their radical leftist government, casting Greece into the unknown.
"You made a very brave choice," Tsipras said in a televised address as jubilant supporters thronged Athens' central Syntagma Square to celebrate the act of defiance of Europe's political and financial establishment.
"The mandate you gave me is not the mandate of a rupture with Europe, but a mandate to strengthen our negotiating position to seek a viable solution."
The euro tumbled against the dollar on Asian markets after the setback for Europe's monetary union, and European shares and bonds took a hit when markets opened after the weekend. But the losses were contained and there was no sign of serious contagion to other weaker euro zone sovereigns.
Analysts with several international banks including Citi, Barclays, BNP Paribas and J.P. Morgan said a "Grexit" from the euro zone was now their most likely scenario.
EU officials said it would be hard to give Greece easier terms, not least because its economy has plunged back into recession since Tsipras' Syriza party won power in January. Public finances were now in a far worse position than when the rejected bailout deal was put together.
But on the streets of Athens, citizens were unrepentant at their defiant vote.
"I voted 'No' to austerity; I want this torture to end," said 42-year-old Katerina Sarri, a mother of two manning a Kiosk in Athens.
"I'm aware that we will suffer for years but I'm still hopeful. I need to know that there is light at the end of tunnel, that the lives of my children will be better," she said. (Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou, Deepa Babington, Lefteris Karagiorgiannis and Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Paul Carrel and Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Julien Ponthus in Paris; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Peter Graff)
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Oldest Newest Share + Today 8:06 PM EDTU.S. At Odds With Germany Over Greek Debt Crisis
Daniel Marans reports:
On Monday, the Obama administration renewed its calls for a resolution to Greece’s debt crisis, but in a notable change from recent months, focused its remarks on Greece’s creditors.
"The task before the leaders of Europe remains the same," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at a press briefing. "We have long indicated that it's our view that it's in their collective interest for these differences to be resolved."
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 4:29 PM EDTGreek Parliament President Slams Martin Schulz
Greek Parliament President Zoe Konstantopoulou did not take kindly to the combative statements of European Parliament head Martin Schulz in the wake of Greek voters' decision to reject a bailout deal with European creditors.
Greek media site Esfyn reports that Konstantopoulou will send Schulz a letter imploring him "not to make any more statements which show disregard to people's mandate resulting from a democratic procedure of popular sovereignty, such as yesterday's referendum.
Schulz said on Monday that Greece faces a "difficult and dramatic time" if its government does not come up with a new meaningful proposal.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voiced his support for Greece’s decision to reject a bailout deal that would have come with more austerity measures for the country.
“I applaud the people of Greece for saying ‘no’ to more austerity for the poor, the children, the sick and the elderly,” Sanders said in a statement on Monday. “In a world of massive wealth and income inequality Europe must support Greece's efforts to build an economy which creates more jobs and income, not more unemployment and suffering.”
The International Monetary Fund told Greece on Monday it could not provide funds to countries that had missed payments due to the international lender, an IMF representative said.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde spoke to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras about the Greek people's rejection in a referendum of the bailout terms of international lenders.
"The managing director explained the fund's inability to disburse under its arrears policy," the representative said in a statement that appeared to refer to Greece's default on an IMF loan last month.
SkyNews' Ed Conway spoke with Greece's former finance minister on Monday night. Varoufakis says he may be leaving the finance minister, but will be ready on the sidelines to offer advice.
In which I gatecrash @yanisvaroufakis's leaving party at the finance ministry in Athens: https://t.co/q24TfFcvei
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) July 6, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 3:28 PM EDTDebt Relief Could Be Greece's Reward For Standing Up To Europe
Daniel Marans reports:
The creditors of nations long enforced their claims by the cannons of government and, in some cases, the cannons of companies. They called it gunboat diplomacy, and it cared little for the fate of those at the wrong end of the guns.
While the modern financial services era largely silenced the cannons, the political institutions that replaced them still press creditors' claims ahead of all other obligations a nation might have.
On Sunday, Greek voters stood up and said no to this arrangement. If Greece gets its way, the future of its people's pensions, infrastructure, health care and education will count at least as much as the payment of its debt.
Greece has long said it, and since Sunday's referendum, some other European leaders are saying it: Greece needs debt relief.
Read the full story here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 2:35 PM EDT'Sending A Message'
Reuters' George Hay analyzes the ECB's move:
ECB lifting of ELA collateral haircuts is about sending a message to Greece post-referendum, as much as driven by technical factors
— George Hay (@gfhay) July 6, 2015
ECB haircut move restricts crisis loans and reduces the amount of time Greek banks can stay alive. They are already almost illiquid.
— George Hay (@gfhay) July 6, 2015
ECB looks to have calculated that the fallout from potentially putting a weak Greek bank in resolution = less than no response to a No vote.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met in Paris on Monday to discuss the Greek vote.
The Associated Press reports:
The leaders of Germany and France say they respect Greece's vote against the terms of an international bailout, and added the door remains open to negotiations with the Greek government to find a way to keep the country in the 19-country eurozone.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the importance of Greece taking "responsibility" for reforming its economy, while French President Francois Hollande said it is important for Europe to show "solidarity" with Greece. The two leaders run the eurozone's largest economies.
The two leaders met in Paris on Monday. Their brief statement sets the tone for an emergency summit Tuesday in Brussels of the eurozone's 19 national leaders.
Both stressed the urgency of coming to a decision on a solution to Greece's financial woes, with Merkel demanding proposals from Greece's prime minister this week.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 2:13 PM EDTMore On The ECB Announcement
From the Associated Press:
The European Central Bank says it is keeping the level of emergency credit to Greek banks unchanged, leaving the banks under increasing pressure as they try to cope with cash withdrawals.
The ECB says in a statement that the credit "can only be provided against sufficient collateral." That collateral has been weakened due to the worsening financial situation of Greece.
The decision leaves the Greek banks in a stranglehold, as they struggle to replenish cash machines in the coming days.
The ECB says it is monitoring the situation in the financial markets closely and is ready to use all available measures to keep stability in the 19-nation eurozone.
European Central Bank leaves level of emergency credit to Greek banks unchanged - @AP http://t.co/LRnP7D96bm
— Breaking News (@BreakingNews) July 6, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 1:51 PM EDTChange In Style, Not In Substance
Greece may have a new finance minister, but the government will likely hold the same views opposing austerity. Five years ago, Euclid Tsakalotos wrote a paper on the Greek economic crisis, in which he criticized the austerity measures imposed on Greece through a bailout. Such policies “will lead not only to severe social hardship but is also unlikely to confront the underlying problems,” he said. His tone appears very much in line with that of his predecessor, Yanis Varoufakis.
Uh Oh Troika. New Greek Finance Minister is just as smart as old one! (got my hands on one of his papers). What now? pic.twitter.com/V0X2dWatgy
— Mariana Mazzucato (@MazzucatoM) July 6, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 1:29 PM EDT'The Future Of Greece Is In Merkel And Hollande's Hands'
Gianni Del Vecchio, Editor-in-Chief of HuffPost Italy, argues that the future of Greece, and by consequence that of Europe, lies in the hands of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande.
"It's not in the hands of Alexis Tsipras, even though he emerges reinforced by the "No" vote cast by six out of every 10 Greeks," Del Vecchio says. "It's not in the hands of the German hawks and Eastern Europe, though they were circling above Syntagma Square immediately after the referendum. Nor is it in the hands of our Italian Premier Renzi, who during the night shared with news agencies a certain sense of irritation over the reemergence of the French-German axis. Only the Monday evening meal between Angela and Francois in Paris will delineate an approach that will then be discussed -- or better yet, "ratified" -- Tuesday afternoon during the Euro summit held with all the other countries in the Eurozone."
Read more here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 1:26 PM EDT'Not Without Greece'
HuffPost Spain's Editorial Director, Montserrat Dominguez, weighs in on Sunday's vote:
Greece's 'No' was so definitive, so emotional, that it mortally threatens the necessary trust to move forward in the negotiations. The dialectical knives of this nerve-racking week -- then-Finance Minister Varoufakis accusing the EU of terrorism, etc -- were effective in mobilizing the Greek people, but its boomerang effect has been the implosion of any way to bridge a new dialogue.
The Greeks are proud, and they just demonstrated it at the polls. But what about the wounded pride of Berlin and Brussels, of the creditors who feel insulted while at the same time are also being asked for new credit extensions?
Read her full analysis here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 1:20 PM EDTLeaders Of Europe's New Left Rejoice
HuffPost Italy reports:
We are in Athens, but the headquarters are Spartan. The air conditioning isn’t working, but nobody in these rooms with their partially white and partially (of course) red walls is concerned with it. Fresh beverages, peanuts, exquisite Greek almonds and other snacks arrive. You munch and take what refreshment you can, with eyes attached to the television.
Besides the polls, the first partial data from the islands is coming in: "No." There is a cry of victory in every language; it is because in some areas the “no” vote has reached 80 percent. “Incredible,” says one Frenchman. We are in Athens and from here, as it seems from what is on the television, Sparta is wavering. It had been expected to vote "yes," but now that prediction is withdrawn: It is a “no” there as well. “We’ve taken back Sparta!” is the cry.
The euro may be facing an existential crisis but the giant 14-meter sculpture of the euro symbol that towers over downtown Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank, was still getting its biggest makeover in 13 years on Monday.
Considered an eyesore by many Frankfurters, the run down blue and gold structure situated in front of the ECB's former headquarters was dismantled by construction workers, who plan to fix it up from years of wear and tear, including attacks by protesters.
Read the full Reuters report here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 12:13 PM EDTCruelty Or Compromise
Karl Whelan argues in The WorldPost:
The decisive nature of the No vote should persuade European leaders to set aside their hopes of forcing regime change and to focus their minds on the practical implications of a Grexit. They need to acknowledge something that is widely accepted: that Greece cannot pay back all of the money loaned by Europe. Pushing Greece towards a euro exit is probably the strategy that will ultimately minimize the return of money to the creditors.
Read the full blog here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 11:53 AM EDTPiketty: Germany Shouldn't Be Telling Greece To Repay Debt
Thomas Piketty isn’t mincing words when it comes to the Greek debt crisis.
HuffPost Business reports:
In an interview with German newspaper Die Ziet last month (and translated recently by business analyst Gavin Schalliol), the leading French economist pummeled Germany for its hypocrisy in demanding debt repayment from Greece.
Piketty, who penned the blockbuster 2013 book on income inequality Capital in the Twenty-First Century, slammed conservatives who favor the economic austerity measures Germany and France are demanding of Greece, saying they demonstrate a “shocking ignorance” of European history.
“Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted,” Piketty said. “The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem.”
In his Sunday New York Times column, the Nobel Prize-winning economist compared European leaders’ demand for more austerity measures to medieval doctors who prescribed a bloodletting to patients who grew more sickly. Though Greek voters’ rejection of their creditors’ strict economic terms could lead to instability in the short run, Krugman said the “no” vote will help Greece find the best path to solvency.
“A ‘yes’ vote in Greece would have condemned the country to years more of suffering under policies that haven’t worked and, in fact, given the arithmetic, can’t work: austerity probably shrinks the economy faster than it reduces debt, so that all the suffering serves no purpose,” Krugman wrote. “The landslide victory of the ‘no’ side offers at least a chance for an escape from this trap.”
Now, Greece seems more likely than ever to ditch the euro in favor of another currency, possibly the drachma, which preceded the legal tender of the 19-country monetary union. Krugman called that “the best of bad options.”
Read the full story here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 10:33 AM EDTPublic Transportation Free For Another Week
Athens public transport free for another week http://t.co/KfSiwiWyby pic.twitter.com/eZje4803XV
— Kathimerini English (@ekathimerini) July 6, 2015
The managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, issued an ultra-short statement on Monday responding to the result of the Greek referendum:
Ms. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), made the following statement today:
"The IMF has taken note of yesterday’s referendum held in Greece. We are monitoring the situation closely and stand ready to assist Greece if requested to do so.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 10:01 AM EDTMeet Greece's New Finance Minister
The Guardian profiles Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece's new finance minister.
As the new point man who will coordinate face-to-face contact between Athens and its creditors, Tsakalotos is likely to be methodical, detail-oriented and tenacious. His leftist views, adopted at Oxford where he belonged to the student wing of Greece’s euro communist party, were honed in the anti-globalization movement.
Read the full story here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 9:52 AM EDTTsakalotos To Replace Varoufakis
Bailout negotiator Euclid Tsakalotos to take over as finance minister #Greece
— Kathimerini English (@ekathimerini) July 6, 2015
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 9:42 AM EDTTsipras Speaks With Putin
From the Associated Press:
The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin received a phone call from Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose government is racing against the clock to reach a bailout deal with creditors.
The two leaders discussed the results of Sunday's referendum in Greece and "several questions about the further development of Russian-Greek cooperation," the Kremlin said.
During Monday's call, the Kremlin said Putin "expressed support for the Greek people in overcoming the difficulties facing their country."
The head of VTB, Russia's second-largest state bank, said over the weekend that Russia might be interested in buying Greek assets if they were to be privatized but that direct loans to Greece were unlikely.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 9:27 AM EDTVaroufakis Leaves The Finance Ministry In Style
Greece's maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who announced his surprise resignation leaves the Ministry of Finance with his wife Danai on the back of a motorbike downtown Athens, on July 6 2015. (ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images)
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 9:08 AM EDTAngela's Ashes And Tsipras' Attributes
Lucia Annunziata, Editorial Director of HuffPost Italy, reflects on the victory of the "no" camp:
Even if the referendum, as all of Europe's elites have maintained up until this point, was forced and an irresponsible act, now that it's over at least we can say that it brought about a necessary, definitive clarification of the true mood of the Greek people, the consensus around Alexis Tsipras and, last but not least, on Europe itself.
The crushing "no" vote has the ring of humiliation for everyone who wanted a clash in Europe, convinced they could rein in a riotous nation with a whip and a carrot.
Read the full story here.
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 8:58 AM EDTPHOTOS: The Day After
A man begs for money in front of the Bank of Spain (Denis Doyle/Getty Images)
Nuns walk past the Bank of Spain headquarters. (Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images)
A man reads the fron tpage headlines about the results of Greece's referendum at a kiosk in Thessaloniki on July 6, 2015.(SAKIS MITROLIDIS/AFP/Getty Images)
Share this:TweetSharetumblr Share + Today 8:52 AM EDT'We Are Going To Look If We Can Save The Process'
The head of the group of eurozone finance ministers said on Monday that keeping Greece in the euro is still the aim.
Reuters reports:
"It doesn't bring us closer to a solution right away. In fact, when proposals are rejected that only makes things more difficult," Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem told reporters.
Dijsselbloem said keeping Greece in the euro zone "is still their objective and mine."
Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister, said the Dutch government would discuss a Greek request for additional emergency funding under the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).
"We are going to look, step by step, if we can save the process," Dijsselbloem said as he headed into a Dutch government meeting. "At the same time, there is a request for an ESM program."
Elizabeth Dolan quit her job as a director at a public company in May. Then, she did something unusual: She told the world why.
As the sole woman on the board of the activewear company Quiksilver, Dolan says she faced an unacceptable level of unconscious gender bias, as she described in a June blog post for Fortune and recently reaffirmed to The Huffington Post.
Dolan, 57, said that her male colleagues completely shut her out of multiple discussions over whether to fire Andy Mooney, the company’s chief executive -- even though hiring, firing and searching for a CEO are among a board’s most critical jobs.
Writing at Fortune, Dolan said she only learned of Mooney’s firing in an email after the fact. She said that four of her fellow directors told her she was “too conflicted” to be involved in the process, because she and Mooney had worked together many years before at Nike. Yet when she was first being interviewed for the board position, Dolan said, the directors had asked her whether she'd be willing to replace the CEO if necessary.
"I said yes," Dolan wrote at Fortune. "Like them, I am a businessperson. I understand the tough decisions that we all need to make. I thought my answer had satisfied them. Apparently not."
“The board assumed they knew how I would have voted based on a biased assumption that I’d vote to keep my ‘friend,’” wrote Dolan, who is now the chief marketing officer at Fox International Channels. “Because that’s what girls do, right? They make emotional decisions about friends instead of strategic decisions based on business facts. Girls can’t keep a secret. Girls are too emotional. Girls can’t make tough calls. And, thank goodness, girls won’t speak out when we marginalize them.”
Quiksilver declined to comment to HuffPost.
“Had there been other women on the board, the decision to silence me would have been different,” Dolan told HuffPost. “The more diversity, the more likely someone will speak up.”
For years, academics and others have warned that you can’t just appoint one woman to a board of directors and consider it “diversified.” But a number of firms seem to have adopted a one-and-done philosophy -- particularly smaller companies, like Quiksilver, and tech startups.
Being the only woman on a board can mean you’re treated as the sole representative for an entire demographic -- as in, "Hey Betty, you’re a woman. You think ladies will like our new product updates?" Your actual expertise gets overlooked.
“The danger of being the only woman or only minority in any room is the danger of being seen as a token or representing the ‘women’s point of view,’” said Brande Stellings, vice president of corporate board services at the women’s advocacy nonprofit Catalyst. “You’re noticed more for your gender than for your contribution.”
A stunning 37 of the companies on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 stock index, including Tesla Motors, Priceline and Comcast, have just one woman on the board, according to an analysis conducted this week by HuffPost. Eight other companies have no women at all. And not a single company has a board with at least 50 percent women.
It’s worse when you look at the so-called "unicorns" -- that is, private firms with a valuation of at least $1 billion. That list includes Uber, Snapchat, Airbnb and other startups approaching household-name status. None of them has a board with more than a single woman, according to a recent analysis from Fortune.
In a widely cited 2006 survey of 50 women directors and other executives, women who were the only female director at their company said they were ignored in meetings and left out of social activities and “even from some decision-making discussions."
Companies also lose out when top corporate leaders are a homogeneous group. “We’re not saying women are better,” said Stellings. “But teams should reflect the full deck of talent and your customer base. You want the business to be poised and ready for the future, and what does your board look like? Does it reflect the past?”
Facing criticism a couple years ago, Twitter finally appointed a woman to its all-male board. Just one. That seemed to squash the uproar. These days, the Twitter board is desperately hunting for a new CEO as the company struggles. Not many people are making a big deal out of the board’s lack of diversity.
Perhaps they should.
The general theory is that you need at least three women to achieve “critical mass” -- the point at which there are enough women in the group that men stop seeing their gender as the most important thing about them. As Harvard Business Review puts it, once there are at least three women in a group, they "tend to be regarded by other board members not as 'female directors' but simply as directors, and they don’t report being isolated or ignored."
We're a long way off from that being the norm. Overall, the percentage of women in the boardroom is absurdly small: Only 19 percent of directors at Standard & Poor's 500 companies in the United States are women, according to research from Catalyst.
Stellings wouldn’t comment on whether unconscious biases play a role in the boardroom. But she did say that because women are so underrepresented, there’s a higher risk of stereotyping. Groups might experience “not a bias against women," she said, "but a bias in favor of the dominant group." (That would be men.)
It’s extremely rare for a female board member to speak up about bias. There’s a concern that doing so would be career suicide -- that companies would hesitate to appoint a “loudmouth.”
Indeed, one corporate recruiter told HuffPost that he would have advised Dolan to stay silent, since speaking publicly in the way that she did can be harmful to a company's reputation (and its stock price).
“I applaud anybody who stands up for the need for diversity of thought and inclusion in the boardroom,” said Dennis Carey, vice chairman at the executive search firm Korn Ferry. “But you’ve got to be careful when you do it.”
Still, Dolan said that she’s been hearing from a lot of peers who are thanking her for speaking up. They've told her they're on the lookout for a new board position for her. Dolan has held executive-level positions since the 1980s, when she was at Nike; she also ran marketing at OWN, Oprah Winfrey's company.
Dolan said that going public with her story was something she considered very carefully.
“You want to make sure people understand you’re doing it because you believe in the company, and business in general, and basic gender equality across the board," she said. "You don't want it to become a misunderstood moment where you are just a noisy girl who can’t play in the big time. I’ve been in the big time a long time.”
Andrew Lord contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly inferred from Dolan's article that some directors on the Quiksilver board were former colleagues or surfing buddies of Andy Mooney. Dolan told HuffPost she was referring to a previous CEO.
