The European progressive “Renaissance”: Innovation and Growth in Europe

Marica Frangakis Ioannou

The roots of the current crisis are both proximate and fundamental. The financialisation of the global economy and the concomitant rising inequality, whereby the gap between the top 1% of the population and the remaining 99% reached the proportions of the 1920s, are fundamental causes closely connected to the workings of contemporary capitalism. At the same time, the excesses of finance and the ‘revolving doors’ between finance and politics are can be said to be proximate causes. As such, they have entered the mainstream discourse, albeit to little effect so far.