PIGS (economics)

PIGS or PIIGS or PIIGGS is a jargonistic acronym used in economics and finance. The derogatory term refers to the economies of: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, four EU member states that were unable to refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks on their own during the debt crisis; or originally Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece, four countries in southern Europe.

The term became popularised during the European sovereign-debt crisis of the late 2000s and expanded in use during this period. In the 1990s (when the term probably originated), Ireland was not included in this term, having debt significantly below the Eurozone average, and a government surplus as late as 2006. However, taking on the guarantee of banks' debt, the government budget deficit rose to 32% of GDP in 2010, which was the world's largest. It then became associated with the term replacing Italy or changing the acronym to PIIGS, with Italy also indicated as the second "I". Sometimes a second G (PIGGS or PIIGGS), for Great Britain, was also added. In 2012, Patrick Allen writing for CNBC suggested that France should be added to the list.

Claudio Santamaria

Claudio Santamaria (born 22 July 1974; Rome, Italy) is an Italian actor best known for portraying the terrorist Carlos in Casino Royale.

He was the voice of Christian Bale in the Italian version of Batman Begins and the voice of Eric Bana in Munich, both in 2005.

Filmography

Erri De Luca

Erri De Luca (born 1950, Naples) is an Italian novelist, translator and poet. He has been recognized by critic Giorgio De Rienzo of Corriere della Sera as "the writer of the decade". He is also known for his opposition to the Lyon-Turin high speed train line, and is being sued for having called for its sabotaging. On October 19, 2015 Erri De Luca was cleared of inciting criminal damage. He reacted to the not-guilty verdict declaring that "An injustice has been avoided."

Biography

Erri De Luca's original first name was Enrico (Henry), an hommage to his grandmother, who had American nationality, but defined by him as an "accident."

Upon completing high school in 1968 Erri De Luca joined the radical left-wing movement Lotta Continua. After the organization's disbandment he left the political involvement. He worked as a blue collar at the Fiat factory in Turin and at the Catania airport. He also was a truck driver and a mason, working in job sites in Italy, France and Africa. He rode relief convoys in Yugoslavia during the war between 1993 and 1999.

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books, primarily on politics and linguistics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He married fellow linguist Carol Schatz in 1949. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows, where he developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he was awarded his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, in 1957 emerging as a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which laid the basis for the scientific study of language, while from 1958 to 1959 he was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of behaviorism, being particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis (Greek: Ιωάννης "Γιάνης" Βαρουφάκης,pronounced [ˈʝanis varuˈfacis]; born 24 March 1961) is an academic economist who was a member of the Greek parliament between January and September 2015. He represented the ruling Syriza party and held the position of Minister of Finance for seven months. He voted against the terms of the third bailout package for Greece. In December 2015 he announced plans to launch a pan-European movement the following February.

Varoufakis is a participant in the current debates on the global and European crisis, the author of The Global Minotaur and several academic texts on economics and game theory, Professor of Economic Theory at the University of Athens and a private consultant for Valve Corporation. He is a dual Greek-Australian citizen and describes himself as a 'libertarian Marxist': "In truth, Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day. It is not something that I volunteer to talk about in 'polite society' much these days because the very mention of the M-word switches audiences off."