10th Next Left Economic Circle: Towards Progressive alternatives for Europe

The 10th Roundtable took place at FEPS with Prof. Lord John Eatwell of Queens’ College Cambridge and Jonathan Portes (Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research). Jonathan Portes presented possible progressive alternatives for creating jobs and achieving growth in Europe. In particular, he emphasises that in order to increase consensus the euro requires a fiscal and a banking union. Furthermore, alternative policies should focus on tackling youth unemployment, invest in innovation and increase public service productivity. Lord Eatwell assessed the role played by financial markets in the Eurozone crisis and on the importance of identifying the correct tool for stabilising the financial system.

Read the presentation

–> by Lord Eatwell

–> by Jonathan Portes

Background on the guests:
John Leonard Eatwell, Baron Eatwell, was born on 2nd of February 1945. Lord Eatwell was educated at Queens’ College at the University of Cambridge, where he gained a B.A., followed by Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar, where he obtained a Ph.D. and returned to Queens’ as a research fellow. In 1988, together with Lord Hollick, he set up the Institute for Public Policy Research (one of Britain’s leading think-tanks). In1996 he was elected President of Queens’. He is Labour’s frontbench spokesperson for Treasury and Economic Affairs in the House of Lords. He joined the House of Lords as a life peer in 1992. He is President of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and Professor of Financial Policy in the University.  He has been a teaching fellow at Harvard University and a Visiting Professor at Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Amsterdam.  John is a Director of the Centre for Financial Analysis and Policy (CFAP) at the Judge Business School at Cambridge, and is also a Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. He is currently a director of SAV Credit Limited and an adviser to the private equity firms Warburg Pincus & Company International Ltd and Palamon Capital Partners.

Jonathan Portes has a degree in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, and a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University. Mr. Portes started his career in HM Treasury in 1987, where he worked in several policy divisions before becoming Speechwriter and Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1991. Mr. Portes moved to the U.S. in 1995, where he combined a senior role in private sector economic consultancy, working on financial, regulatory and competition issues, with an advisory position on debt management issues at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He returned to the UK in 1999 where he led an influential project on migration for the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. From 2000 to 2002, he was a partner in an international development consultancy, leading missions to Uganda, Albania and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to examine the European Commission’s economic and social development programmes and overall country strategy. Nowadays, he is a member of advisory committees at a number of economic research institutes and is a Trustee of the Coram Foundation. He is a Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Previously, he was Chief Economist at the Cabinet Office, where he advised the Cabinet Secretary, Gus O’Donnell, and Number 10 Downing Street on economic and financial issues. Before that he held a number of other senior economic policy posts in the UK government.

Antolín Sánchez Presedo was born on 5th of April 1955. He is graduated in law from the University of Santiago de Compostela (1972-1977) and has a master’s degree in European Union studies from Carlos III University, Madrid (1994-1996). He worked as a lawyer for five years after finishing his studies. While he was practising law He was elected member of Betanzos and Municipal Council’s. Four years later he became mayor of Betanzos and Member of the Galician Regional Parliament, positions that held until 1985 and 1997 respectively. On the other hand, from 1982 to 1994 he was member of the PSOE Federal Committee and Secretary-General of the PSdeG (Galician Socialist Party) from 1985 to 1997. In 1996 he went back to work as a lawyer and in 2001 assistant professor, MBA section, University of La Coruña. Finally, in 2004 he leaves the last positions and became Member of the European Parliament.

Professor Stephany Griffith Jones (BA Chile, PhD Cambridge), who is currently Financial Markets Program Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. An economist working on global capital flows, with special reference to flows to emerging markets; macro-economic management of capital flows in Latin America, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa; proposals for international measures to diminish volatility of capital flows and reduce likelihood of currency crises; analysis of national and international capital markets; proposals for international financial reform