Talk of a European default continues to rumble around the market ahead of the European Council’s December 16-17 meeting.

For now the European Central Bank has held the euro zone together by purchasing members’ bonds and providing liquidity to beleaguered banks. Although such stopgap solutions, like case-by-case bail-outs, are the path of least political resistance, the effort to avoid defaults at all costs could prove calamitous.

Argentina’s recent default is illustrative. As in Europe today, Argentine politicians ruled out restructuring debts that looked unmanageable. Domingo Cavallo, Argentina’s respected finance minister, even took to the pages of the Financial Times to call the idea “ludicrous” and promise that “Argentina will not be lured by the call of the sirens”. And so throughout 2001 the country attempted increasingly desperate manoeuvres—two IMF loans, a short-for-long securities “megaswap” and finally zero-deficit budgeting—to stave off default.

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In the depths of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote that “[pjractical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”1 This acute observation is applicable to our current Great Recession as well. In fact, the newly discredited ideas are not all that different from the old, suggesting that Keynes may have overestimated people’s ability to learn from their mistakes.

I pursue the parallels between these two watersheds in recent economic history along three paths : the causes of the crises and their relation to economic theory ; the spread of the crises on a global scale; and, finally, recovery- at least as far as we can see it at this point. As Karl Marx famously said, history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce,”2 a criticism that also fits our current condition.

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Products of Slavery [productsofslavery.org] is an online visualization that takes the data (PDF) from a report of the U.S. Department of Labor on child and forced labor worldwide, and makes it open and accessible. Investigations show that more than 122 different products are made using child or forced labor in more than 58 countries.

The website is part of Anti-Slavery International‘s ongoing campaign, as it aims to work with businesses to eradicate slavery in private sector supply chains. The interactive map shows the types of products that are produced in specific countries using child labor, forced labor or both. The quantitative data is accompanied with what is called here as “facts”: moving personal quotes from affected people that illustrate the meaning and story behind this data.

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Cambridge – Now that the European Union and the International Monetary Fund have committed €67.5 billion to rescue Ireland’s troubled banks, is the eurozone’s debt crisis finally nearing a conclusion?

Unfortunately, no. In fact, we are probably only at the mid-point of the crisis. To be sure, a huge, sustained burst of growth could still cure all of Europe’s debt problems – as it would anyone’s. But that halcyon scenario looks increasingly improbable. The endgame is far more likely to entail a wave of debt write-downs, similar to the one that finally wound up the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980’s.

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The latest issue of The Global Studies Journal includes:

• The Dynamics of Knowledge Transfer within Multigenerational Work Environments: Building a Strategic Framework for Engagement and Exchange by Roxanne Helm Stevens, Sondra Clark and Joshua Millage.
• Finding Fault for Different Reasons: A Media Word Analysis Concerning the Coward Teacher by Bruce Kuiper.
• Distance and Displacement in Consular Emergencies: Assisting National Citizens in Distress Abroad by Karen Tindall.
• Heterogeneous Urban Consumptive Space: Taipei City’s Noblewoman Department Stores – Analysis of the BELLAVITA’s Architectural Style by Lin Chang-Rong and Yang Yu-Fu.
• A Multicultural Space in the Global Cityscape: The Neighbourhood Coffee Shop by Faizah Zakaria.
• Globalizing a Teacher Certification Program in Math and Science for International Candidates by Shi Hae Kim.

Governments have been indebted for centuries, running ongoing Ponzi schemes involving tax-payers, investors and future generations. But data sets on debt levels over time are rare (the most comprehensive ones only begin in the 1970s). A new paper from the IMF seeks to resolve this. Data gathered from a number of different sources allow the fund to give a historical perspective on today’s mounting debt. Over the 218 years for which data on America are available, government debt has averaged just 28% of GDP, peaking at 121% in 1946. The maps below compare debt levels in 1932 and 2009. Most countries have become more indebted in the intervening years. In 1932 US debt amounted to 33% of GDP, compared with 84% in 2009. But some, including South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, have gone the other way.

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On the eve of the 2008 New Hampshire primary Bill Clinton finally gave vent to his fury with the Obama campaign. He dismissed Barack Obama’s message as “the biggest fairy tale” he had ever heard. (“Give…me…a…break,” he roared at the startled crowd.) And he denounced underhand tactics, particularly a description of Hillary Clinton as “the senator from Punjab”.

On November 5th Mr Obama, fresh from his humiliation in the mid-term elections, flies to India accompanied by an entourage of almost 250 businesspeople. His message for the folks back home will be that India could be a goldmine for American jobs. And he will clinch a succession of huge business deals with India—not least a $5.8 billion aircraft sale by Boeing.

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• Globalization and Commercialization of Culture: Analyzing the Consumer Attitude and Response of the Youth of Dhaka City by Muntasir Masum.
• The Relationship between Human Resource Practices and Employees’ Commitment to Change in Malaysia Higher Education by May-Chiun Lo, Mung Ling Voon and T. Ramayah.
• Multiculturalism and Information Technology: Competence for Global Management by Denise Fortier.
• Street Medicine: A Green Light for Homeless Medical Care by Julia Borovay, Sara Etemad, Lia K. Jacobson, Sarah Ramirez and Cheyene Sonntag.
• Cross-cultural Immersion: Perceptions and Experience of Chilean Migrants in the UK by Sandra Lopez-Rocha.
• “Sacred Reproductions”: Rethinking Tsurumi’s Tenk? in the Context of the Global Marketplace by Joseph Blessin.

There can be no turning two hundred without regrets. Even so, the element of wistfulness was bound to play an especially large role in the Argentine case. The surprise for me last month, as a yanqui spectator auto-marooned these past few years in Buenos Aires, while I strolled up and down the Avenida 9 de Julio—broadest street in the world, so they say—picking my way through the throngs of Argentines out celebrating the May Revolution of 1810, was that the experience of the bicentenario should look so joyous, as it was later reported to have been in polls of the huge numbers who took part, and that the official commemoration of two centuries of Argentine history should at the same time concentrate on several of the darkest passages in the country’s history. On the occasion of the big parade, fighter jets flew overhead and gauchos rode by on horseback, just as you might expect. But there were also actors depicting militant workers calling for a general strike, to evoke the hundreds cut down by paramilitary gangs in the semana trágica of 1919; a gigantic installation, suspended on guy-wires, of the constitution in flames; a float portraying the Mothers of the Disappeared who campaigned to know their children’s whereabouts during the ruling junta’s frenzy of state terrorism in the late ’70s; and another troupe of actors in business suits tossing funny money to the crowd in much the way—this was the idea—that the Argentina of the 90s had plunged into a delirium, soon punctured, of fictitious prosperity.

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Muslim student leaders say changes to tuition fees in England could breach Islamic rules on finance, which do not permit interest charges.

The coalition government’s plans to raise tuition fees to up to £9,000 also include higher interest rates for repayments of loans.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies says this will make loans unusable for many Muslim students.

A government spokesman said these were “not commercial loans”.

As well as raising tuition fees, the proposals for university funding include changes to loan repayments – with some students set to pay more than at present.

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