Introduction

Vani Borooah

Chapter 1 in Europe in an Age of Austerity, 2014, pp 1-12 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract On the eve of the First World War, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, offered this gloomy prognostication: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.” The slaughter of the 1914–1918 War was the greatest carnage that Europe had known in over a hundred years: on the Allied side, 5 million soldiers, comprising of 52% of enlisted men – and, on the Central Powers side, 8.5 million soldiers, comprising of 57% of enlisted men – were killed. 1 Since then Europe has known two economic carnages which destroyed lives without necessarily taking them. One of them was the Great Depression of the 1930s. The other is the Great Recession that began in 2008 and, at in 2014, continues with no end in sight. In the four years since it began it has blighted the prospects of a generation of young Greeks, Irish, Spaniards, and Portuguese of obtaining a decent job at home or of retirees securing a decent pension for their old age.

Keywords: Interest Rate; European Union; Gross Domestic Product; International Monetary Fund; Euro Area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-39602-0_1

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137396020_1

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