October 27th, 2008
I wrote a piece on Keynes and monetary policy for the Standard, which appeared on Thursday, 23rd October, 2008. You can read it below. Today a group of monetarist economists , supported by a range of bankers, have written to the Telegraph objecting to a public works programme to help economic recovery. They are right that excessive liabilities on the government’s balance sheet could cause interest rates to rise, but government spending has a multiplier effect, and very quickly pays for itself. They seem unaware of this economic fact. There is some overlap between our views on monetary policy as an effective tool, but I disagree with their view that UK government spending has been excessive.
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October 8th, 2008
Both the British Chancellor, Alastair Darling and the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, have been on the radio this morning, resisting the idea that interest rates are political. Instead they have argued, vehemently, that the Bank of England is independent, and that the Bank must decide whether or not to lower interest rates.
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October 1st, 2008
 Wednesday 1st October, 2008
The massive deflation/de-leveraging of credit and debt that is now cascading through the banking system and rapidly deflating the value of housing and other assets in the Anglo-American economies will precipitate large-scale, global economic failure, for years to come.
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September 30th, 2008
 Tuesday 30th September, 2008.
Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. In the US, treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped for $700bn to plug the gaping hole in Wall Street’s banks. In the UK, the government is not just plugging holes, but setting aside competition rules to encourage the monopolisation of finance.
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September 30th, 2008
 Tuesday 30th September, 2008.
Sir, Your editorial “In praise of free markets” (September 27/28) conflates regulation of trade markets with that of financial markets.
This is a flawed analysis, one at the core of most economic orthodoxy – that money, like land, oil, soya beans, diamonds or gold, is a commodity, and therefore that trade and markets in money are no different from markets in, say, soya beans.
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September 3rd, 2008
 A Mr. David Smith in a letter to the Financial Times, (29 Aug 08) has suggested we brand this global recession ‘the bankers’ recession’. He has my support and enthusiastic commitment to raising awareness of the brand. Especially after today’s UK news.
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August 20th, 2008
In this big bad world of the Credit Crunch, powerful central bankers – civil servants all – have bent over backwards to help powerful and rich private bankers.
 On one day, ‘debtonation day’, central bankers in Europe and the US pumped an eye-watering $150 billion into the financial system, to keep big banks afloat. According to Bloomberg, the US’s Federal reserve has ‘cycled $2.58 trillion through U.S. money markets since December’. (Bloomberg 8th August, 2008).
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August 11th, 2008
Have been listening to debates about the conflict in Georgia over the week-end. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Putin’s disregard for democracy. In a similar vein, western commentary about President Hu Jintao’s Olympic Games is never complete without some tut-tutting about democracy and human rights in China.
Yet these leaders have in reality much in common with Alan Greenspan, former chairman of t he US Federal Reserve, who is held in the greatest esteem by western commentators. He came to London recently to promote his book, and I  attended one of his sessions at Chatham House. The deference from the British political and media establishment was nauseating. The Prime Minister had already honoured him with a knighthood, so deferential is he. Yet this is Greenspan on democracy, as expounded in the columns of the Financial Times last week:
“It has become hard for democratic societies accustomed to prosperity to see it as anything other than the result of their deft political management. In reality, the past decade has seen mounting global forces (the international version of  Adam Smith’s invisible hand) quietly displacing government control of economic affairs. Since early this decade, central banks have had to cede control of long-term interest rates to global market forces”
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July 14th, 2008
The Guardian, 12th July, 2008
In Ten tactics to brighten the gloom, the Guardian invited ten experts to give advice to the Chancellor and Prime Minister on how to lift the economic gloom – and to do it in just 100 words. Other contributors included Howard Davies, Robert Peston, Irwin Stelzer and Bill Emmot. Here is Ann Pettifor’s contribution:
Don’t crucify the economy on the cross of inflation. In the 1920s, central bankers crucified debt-laden economies on the cross of gold. In the 90s Japan’s finance ministry crucified that economy on the perceived threat of inflation. Ending the creditor-driven policy of inflation targeting frees up the Bank of England to cut interest rates and immediately helps debt-laden banks, companies and consumers. Inflation is feared most by creditors, grown rich on financial deregulation policies. The greater threat to the poor is a debt-deflationary spiral leading to high unemployment – made more certain by high real rates of interest.
May 30th, 2008
The FT reports today on a debate economists are having with the Bank of England (BoE). To summarise: the Bank of England does not seem bothered by falling house prices; economists are.
This is a very important debate for all those that have debts – because while house prices are falling, the debts on those houses loom larger for owners. According to the Office for National Statistics in May, unemployment is rising, and unemployment makes it hard, if not impossible, to pay off any kind of mortgage. This is the context in which the BoE is preparing to raise interest rates above the current 5% and appearing relaxed about falling house prices.
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In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote:
Click here to read the full story in openDemocracy
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