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Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, as well as a distinguished senior fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. He is the author of Obama's Challenge and other books.

Recent Articles

Actually, it’s Greece’s Election

Robert KuttnerMay 25, 2012

ATHENS—To hear the leaders of the European austerity party and a lot of commentators tell it, the upcoming Greek election will be a “referendum” between keeping Greece’s austerity commitments and staying in the Eurozone—or recklessly walking away. A vote for a centrist coalition, supposedly, is a vote for staying in; a vote for the left is a vote for throwing caution to the winds and destroying Greece.

But viewed from Greece, that framing is totally wrong.

The Issue Europe Won’t Face

Robert KuttnerMay 24, 2012
(Flickr/Davide Olivia)

 

Europe’s leaders emerged far apart at their summit dinner in Brussels Wednesday night. They could not even agree on relatively easy measures to contain the escalating crisis, such as Eurobonds or a greater role for the European Central Bank (ECB).

But at the core of the crisis is an issue that Europe’s leaders are even more reluctant to take on—the ease with which hedge funds and other speculators can drive a small economy into the ground.

Merkel in the Minority

Robert KuttnerMay 23, 2012
(Flickr / Environment Blog)

ATHENS—The European austerity caucus led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel is coming apart, but Germany retains the power to block the newly forming coalition for growth as a solution to the eurozone crisis. Tonight’s summit dinner in Brussels is unlikely to produce a breakthrough.

But what a difference an election makes. Since Francois Hollande was elected President of France less than three weeks ago, leaders that had been bullied into siding with the Germans are breaking loose.

Time for a Financial Transaction Tax

Robert KuttnerMay 21, 2012

Despite the Camp David G8 summit’s support for a shift from austerity to growth, there is no agreement among major western leaders on what growth requires.

Here is an idea whose time has come: a Financial Transactions Tax.

The tax would do two things urgently required by the crisis. It would take some of the profit out of the pure speculation that has created such hardship for countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland whose economies have already been pummeled by recession and by perverse demands for belt tightening.

And a tax on financial trades could raise some serious revenue, which could be put back into green investment and other forms of economic stimulus to help the economies of Europe revive.

Is a Vote Against Austerity Enough?

Robert KuttnerMay 15, 2012
(AP Photo / Michel Spingler)

 

The voters in France and Greece have rejected the parties of austerity. But it is not yet clear that the party of growth can deliver the recovery that the citizenry wants. On both sides of the Atlantic, the obstacles are more political than economic.

In Europe the conventional wisdom, enforced by Germany and the European Central Bank, still holds that the path to growth is budget restraint. Unfortunately, the more that budgets are tightened, the more economies shrink and the more revenues fall. No large economy has ever deflated its way to recovery.

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