Croatia

The Keynesian “Modest Proposal”, written by Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland, represented the most comprehensive proposal which could had shown (or it still can?) the way out of the European crisis. In contrast to this plan, the politicians have chosen the policy of harsh economic austerity and of imposing fiscal discipline, which completely unmasked the European reality: the political mechanisms of the EU are completely in the hands of bankers willing to dismantle what little remained of democratic institutions and to destroy entire economies, as in the case of Greece, only to maintain their profits. In this context, it is necessary to answer the following questions about the future of the EU: will the agreement on fiscal discipline really take hold? will the political integration be sustainable under such conditions? does the collapse of Eurozone imply the disintegration of the EU? and, most importantly, will there be resistance on the streets strong enough to prevent the transformation of the capitalist models of the EU into a unified model with particular features distinctive of Chinese capitalism? Reconstruction of the European economy based on Varoufakis/Holland plan would represent the most developed alternative to the path into the “postmodern 30s”, but the logic of capitalist reproduction is blocking any possibility of changing the current economic direction that is leading Europe into collapse. My intervention will try to provide answers to these questions, and to anticipate the sequence of events arising from the ruthless implementation of fiscal austerity. Domagoj Mihaljević holds a BA in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, where he is also preparing his MA thesis on the dissolution of Yugoslavia. ***** Domagoj Mihaljević: Izgradnja kapitalizma z evropskimi potezami Keynesovski »skromni predlog«, ki sta ga pripravila Yanis Varoufakis in Stuart Holland, je bil najizčrpnejši predlog, ki bi lahko pokazal (in mogoče še zmeraj lahko pokaže) pot iz evropske krize. V nasprotju s tem so se politiki odločili za politiko stroge gospodarske vzdržnosti in implementacije fiskalne discipline, kar je povsem razkrinkalo evropsko realnost: politični mehanizmi EU so v celoti v rokah bančnikov, ki so pripravljeni razgraditi še tisto malega, kar je ostalo od demokratičnih institucij in, kot vidimo v Grčiji, uničiti celotna gospodarstva, da bi ohranili svoje dobičke. V tem kontekstu je nujno, da odgovorimo na tale vprašanja o prihodnosti EU: ali bo sporazum o fiskalni disciplini res uveljavljen, ali bo politična integracija pod takšnimi pogoji vzdržna, ali propad evrskega območja implicira razgradnjo EU in – kar je najpomembneje – ali bo upor na ulicah dovolj močan, da prepreči preobrazbo kapitalističnih modelov EU v enoten model s potezami kitajskega kapitalizma? Prenova evropskega gospodarstva na temeljih Varoufakisovega in Hollandovega načrta bi bila najrazvitejša alternativa poti v »postmoderna trideseta leta«, vendar logika kapitalistične reprodukcije preprečuje vsakršno možnost spremembe trenutne ekonomske usmeritve, ki vodi Evropo v propad. Naša intervencija bo poskusila ponuditi odgovore na ta vprašanja in predvideti zaporedje dogodkov, ki bo izšlo iz neusmiljene implementacije fiskalne vzdržnosti. Domagoj Mihaljević je diplomant Fakultete za ekonomijo in poslovne vede Univerze v Zagrebu, kjer pripravlja tudi svoj magisterij na temo razpada Jugoslavije. *********************** Mislav Žitko: Reclaiming Underdevelopment: Financial Liberalization and Export- led Growth Strategy in Croatia The crisis of the eurozone has brought severe pressure on the Eastern European countries and reinforced their socio-economic trajectory that had been put in place at the beginning of the post-socialist transition. After a period of illusive prosperity the global economic turmoil has laid bare the vulnerabilities that have been building up through the entire period of the post-socialist transition. The imperatives of price stability and financial liberalization had an adverse effect on the post-socialist countries, as they exposed their economies to the mechanism of international competition while at the same time reducing the maneuvering space for the implementation of monetary and fiscal policy. Constructing a more profound narrative of the last two decades of the post-socialist economic history requires an analysis of the institutional features and political practices in the context of the process of financialization. Investigating the link between the central bank policies, the privatization of the banking sector and the growth of private and public debt is a prerequisite for the understanding of the specific form of “peripheral capitalism”. In this paper I shall look at the Croatian economy in the period between 2000 and 2012 more closely and, comparing it with other post-socialist countries (Serbia, Hungary, Bulgari

• published: 28 Apr 2012
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