By Ann Pettifor – posted March 25th on Labour List
There is a ferocious battle being played out around how we should interpret and understand the financial crisis and its consequences. And I am not talking about the crude and quite hysterical response to the budget in the Conservative press today. That we can safely ignore. No, it’s more than that. It’s about key economic issues, and it’s vital that we all grasp them, and fight the good fight on behalf of those who will be victims of orthodox economic ideology.
The orthodox story line goes like this: the most momentous crisis facing the world is government debt – not economic failure and collapse; not the collapse of private investment; not financial instability, or deflation, or currency volatility or the threat of a dangerous rise in protectionism and a new global trade war. And certainly not the rise in unemployment.
By Ann Pettifor – Posted March 24th in the Guardian Comment is free
My more or less immediate response to Alistair Darling’s final budget:
This was a politically skilful budget. Alistair Darling faced the problem of the ongoing deflation of an economy de-leveraging its debt in unseemly haste, and dragging down economic activity, prices, profits, incomes and jobs as it does so. He also had to tackle the substantial decline in full-time employment over the course of the recession, only partly offset by increases in part-time employment. Thirdly, he had to counter the threat to Britain’s long-term energy and climate security.
By Ann Pettifor – Posted March 16th on Labour List
Together with the Prime Minister of Greece, Mr. George Papandreou, I am going to give evidence to the EU’s Special Committee on the Financial Crisis in Brussels this Thursday, March 18th.
So today’s leaked report from the EU, arguing that Labour’s plans for cuts to public spending are not “ambitious enough”, has got me really het up.
Labour, it appears, is just not ambitious enough about its goals for cutting investment and exacerbating unemployment. It does not have punitive enough targets for cutting benefits to the poor and services for the mentally ill and frail.
In the “imbecile idiom” (to quote Keynes) of today’s financial fashion, the EU, it seems, would prefer for unemployment to rise, for people to live in hovels, and for government “to shut out the sun and the stars” – so that we conform to an arbitrary number set in Frankfurt by a group of bankers, under a pact unwisely signed by an earlier British government.
“The pound of flesh which I demand of him is deerely bought, ’tis mine, and
I will haue it.” Shylock in the Merchant of Venice.
Despite the relevance of its theme to much of my work, I am not in the habit of quoting Shakespeare’s anti-Semitic play of 1596, the Merchant of Venice. But William Buiter’s column in the Financial Times of 2 March drove me back to the text. (‘Britain’s lack of credibility hurts sterling.’)
With Saturday’s Iceland referendum due in just a couple of days (6th March), Advocacy International’s directors have an op-ed article critical of the UK and Netherlands governments in today’s Morgunbladid, Iceland’s main daily newspaper.
So the negotiations have broken down, British and Dutch “bullying” (FT 27 February, 2010) continues and the referendum goes ahead. What next?
We emphasize that this is not a sovereign debt crisis, even if the British and Dutch want us to think it is.
It is a crisis of EU regulatory failure, and of the Anglo-American economic model.
The people of Iceland have a deep democratic tradition, and through the referendum have the opportunity to assert their sovereignty and autonomy.
Their leadership and example will encourage people in other democracies to reject harsh cuts in public services and living standards made at the behest of the very people and institutions responsible for the crisis. For through the wholesale nationalisation of private losses, we are all – not only in Iceland – asked to pay the price of private, reckless risk-taking. Read post »
If today’s speculators bring down the Greek economy, they will likely blow up more debtor nations, and then in a cascading effect, turn on their main benefactors, the now heavily indebted British and United States governments.
Citizens are rightly angry at the way both the Bush and Obama administrations, aided by Governor Ben Bernanke — pretty well unconditionally bailed-out the bankers of Wall St., just like governments in Europe and Asia.
While politicians and regulators rushed to dampen the flames of financial crisis with taxpayer funds, what happened to those guilty of financial arson?
Besides the odd rogue and loner like Bernard Madoff, none has gone to jail for crimes against the people, as far as I know.
As if to rub our collective noses in it, bankers have paraded their contempt for both politicians and taxpayers by using bail-out resources to post massive capital gains and bonuses. It’s hard to believe they could be guilty of worse.
But believe it you must. For now these self-same bankers are turning on their rescuers — the governments that bailed them out.
A response to the "Triple Crunch" of financial crisis, climate change and oil depletion. Read the report published by the Green New Deal Group and nef (new economics foundation).
Welcome to my blog about the financial crisis. I'm Ann Pettifor, author and analyst of the global financial system, and co-author of the Green New Deal. I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and am known for my work on sovereign debt and international finance, including Jubilee 2000. Currently a fellow of the new economics foundation and director of Advocacy International.
Welcome to my blog about the financial crisis. I'm Ann Pettifor, author and analyst of the global financial system, and co-author of the Green New Deal. I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and am known for my work on sovereign debt and international finance, including Jubilee 2000. Currently a fellow of the