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31st December, 2009 Dear Readers. First, thank you for the support you have given this blog, and for your helpful and insightful comments over this eventful year. I have much appreciated our conversations, and your loyalty. May 2010 bring you all peace of mind and economic stability. And may we together begin 12 December, 2009 Thank you Jim Smith for your comment on the post below…Thought I would respond by quoting an excellent letter in today’s FT (not on the web) sent in by Mr. Alec McBarnet, of London N6. Dear Sir, City bankers are reported to be considering taking their business to Switzerland, the 12th December 2009 At the end of last month I delivered the prestigious EBOR lecture at York. My address was entitled: “Credit, usury and political power: chasing the moneylenders from the temple that is our democracy” Click on the link below to read a PDF version of the full lecture: 11th December 2009 Last night I appeared on Newsnight alongside American Economist Martin Bailey discussing the much lambasted Tobin Tax. Click here or on the link below to watch the whole episode on BBC iPlayer (the Tobin Tax discussion begins at 15.00 mins in).
It has been an extraordinary day this day, and something to witness: this frenzy of pre-election fisticuffs. Extraordinary because Conservatives, like mindless bullies, are fighting a phoney war against the victims of this crisis. The fact is the Tories are spineless scaredy cats, too timid to take on the perpetrators, who have successfully bribed them with various inducements, including the playground’s shiniest marbles. As a result they have turned away from the perpetrators, and are picking on nurses, policemen, teachers, civil servants, Alzheimer-carers, school cooks, hospital cleaners and psychiatrists – to categorise but a few. All these victims of the financial crisis now stand accused – by the Tories and their friends - of pillaging Treasury coffers of £250 billion – the rise in government debt since this crisis started in 2007. 9th December 2009 Watch Ann Pettifor interviewed live on Jeff Randall’s Sky News show tonight at 7.30pm. She will be joined by Nick Bosanquet for what should be a lively discussion! Click here to find out more about the show.
This is the press release from the new economics foundation: “Two days ahead of the pre-budget report, and as the UN climate change talks open in Copenhagen – the second report from the authors of the original Green New Deal argues that the British Chancellor is likely to miss a historic opportunity to tackle public debt, create thousands of new green jobs and kick-start the transformation to a low-carbon economy. The cuts won’t work, the Green New Deal Group’s second report shows how, contrary to the policy of all the major political parties, cutting public spending now will tip the nation into a deeper recession by increasing unemployment, reducing the tax received and limiting government funding available to kick-start the Green New Deal. Instead a bold new programme of ‘green quantitative easing,’ rather than simply propping up failing banks, could help reduce the public debt and kick-start the transformation of the UK’s energy supply while creating thousands of new green-collar jobs.
Most economists (who should know better) confuse the government’s budget deficit with total government debt. The distinction really is important. Mixing them up is a little like confusing stocks and flows. Or confusing your outstanding mortgage – say £200,000 – with your monthly debt repayments. They are quite different things, and if you were to lose your job, the flows (paid with your salary) come to a halt, and then it’s the stock – the £200,000 – that really matters. Furthermore it is quite possible to increase your mortgage – and lower your monthly payments. Many did this in the boom years of mortgage re-financing. Or even to decrease your mortgage and increase your monthly payments. So, just as the movements in regular mortgage payments tell us little about the outstanding stock of debt, so government deficits tell us little about the stock of debt invested and the stock of debt outstanding. 6th December, 2009 The Observer asked a small group of people to comment in advance of next Wednesday’s Pre-Budget Report. This from yours truly: “Public debt will rise higher if government slashes spending, and recovery will elude us. Unemployment has high costs, but productive government spending, unlike private spending, pays for itself by December 1st, 2009 There was much huffing and puffing by the cheerleaders for premature economic recovery when the Office for National Statistics revealed that the UK was still in recession last week. These same ‘pied pipers’ tried to discredit the ONS’s previous factual announcements. Now the CBI has reported an ‘unexpected’ dip in sales |
In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote: 
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