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    Brown University professor of Political Economy, Mark Blyth talks about the #Brexit vote with ?AthensLive and about the ultimate outcomes for the ?UK and across ?Europe. Don’t panic, his deep Scottish burr is bolstered by English subtitles (I can understand him just fine, myself).

    He also surmises that Scotland’s possible upcoming vote to secede from Britain, in order to return to the EU would likely result in a similar situation to that of ?Greece.

    In his words, “So, you’re going to give up George Osborne, an austerity chancellor – for Dr. Schauble? So, your nice little Scottish welfare state’s going to be protected by the tender embrace of the Germans? How’s that working out for the Greeks? 

    “People aren’t thinking this through. This is a vote against Technocracy. It is a vote against governance by unrepresented, unelected, undemocratic elites. 

    “It’s a no-win situation until the elites…figure out that at the end of the day, as I like to tell my American hedge fund friends, the “Hamptons is not a defensible position.

    “The Hamptons are a very rich area on Long Island that lies along low-lying beaches. Very hard to defend a low-lying beach. Eventually people will come for you.”

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    • Blyth was an orphan who was raised by his grandparents and is the product of the Welfare State in Scotland, where he was born. He is the author of “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.” This is his position on geopolitics:

      “Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts–austerity–to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer.

      “That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn’t work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we recognize austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.”

      About the Author: Mark Blyth is a faculty fellow at the Watson Institute, professor of international political economy in Brown’s Political Science Department, and director of the University’s undergraduate programs in development studies and international relations.

      He is the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century; editor of The Routledge Handbook of International Political Economy: IPE as a Global Conversation, which surveys different schools of IPE around the globe; and co-editor of a volume on constructivist theory and political economy titled Constructing the International Economy. He is working on a new book that questions the political and economic sustainability of liberal democracies, called The End of the Liberal World?

      Blyth is a member of the Warwick Commission on International Financial Reform. He is a member of the editorial board of the Review of International Political Economy, and his articles have appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, and World Politics.

      He has a PhD in political science from Columbia University and taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1997 to 2009.

    • Wait don’t give up so easy! We the people can quickly and easily create our own Council. Is simple free and super powerful!!!

      Ok this is the basic structure. We orginize into 12 groups according to the 12 months of our birth. Next we open the doors to all people. Now as we join in we are grouped with 11 others of the other 11 families/houses.

      We are organizing ourselves in to one group of 12 houses with 12 speakers 1 to represent each of the 12 houses they are the speakers of the peoples Council of 12.

      We all can listen in on the discussion but the speakers are discussing what we the people think is best for us, what we can do to collectively self govern, what we will use as our value to buy and sell between each other/ the peoples money.

      Will create our Council of 12 website post our thoughts, info, talents, products, member contacts, ect…

      Put our heads and hearts together grow our and pull us up from this madness vowing never to allow any one to rule over us again.

      Establish our peoples bank based on the only true value “The People”. We can do this and people it will work. Any questions or suggestions?

    • ” This is the theoretical underpinnings of how all “domesticated” animals became livestock and pets”-Machiavelli-
      Humanity, as such, is governed by false perception, the adherence to the frequency of “fear”, the result of which is literally an upside down perception of “Life”, only that which is aligned with “Light” can partake of “Light”, thus those not aligned with the cosmic current of energy flow (The Divine Intent)–Shall sleeeeep the long sleeeeep…….;..

    • Right, enough of these self-styled ‘experts’.
      Most did well in school, getting good marks in mathematics,
      so they must be smart, eh?
      WRONG. Math is an artificial, human construct with a clear set of rules:
      easy to teach, easy to learn, easy to mark; so it’s objective?
      These kids, with good memories and prepared to learn the rules, get
      selected to go to universities where their ‘skills’ get them a degree.
      Next, they are recruited by conservative institutions, where they fit
      right in as they pursue their uncritical careers. They live in an echo-
      chamber, where everyone agrees with each other. Eventually, they
      climb up the Greasy Pole and are acknowledged as “experts”, when
      they start telling the Masses how to make the Right Decisions.

    • I’d say this man knows what the hell he’s talking about. I think we have had enough Trumpism, and I don’t want and Hilliaryism either. Hey Bernie, get on up to the top of the Heep, we need to change the government bureaucrats, okay, change the government, get rid of the excess, move on up and be real, instead of real hidden behind laws that help only the 1% at the top. To the rest of us, get on the bandwagon, we got to make noise and be heard! WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE!……… Then pull out a gun and blow ourselves away. There are to many curtains between the leaders, and the dumbfounded followers. “Hey Todo, there isn’t a Kansas any more”. Excuse me, I just left the building, if your smart you should too. But where to go, hell no I love it here, time for the 1%ers to get the hell out. Yes folks, I have finely lost it all together!

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