7th January 2010,

Read Ann Pettifor and Jeremy Smith’s letter on why Iceland must NOT repay the debt in the FT today:

” Sir, The president of Iceland’s refusal to approve repayment to the British and Dutch governments should be welcomed (January 5). The pause gives the Anglo-Dutch governments an opportunity to withdraw their demand for full repayment from the government of Iceland, a country whose population at 317,000 is somewhat smaller than Leicester’s.

The UK and the Netherlands, with a combined population of 76m, should cease to use economic force majeure on a tiny country, and accept the principle of co-responsibility for the crisis. Repayment of the nationalised losses of a private bank amounts to €12,000 per Icelandic citizen, and will inevitably impact harshly on their lives and public services. By contrast the cost to Dutch and British taxpayers of the bail-out will be about €50 per capita.

We understand the strong desire of the present government of Iceland to restore the country’s tattered reputation.

But anyone reading the financial press in 2007 and 2008 (as opposed to the academic reports commissioned by Iceland’s chamber of commerce) would have known that Iceland’s banks were far from risk-free. That was why British and Dutch depositors enjoyed good rates of return on their deposits.

The British and Dutch governments have sound political reasons for protecting small savers lured into shark-infested financial waters. What is unjust is that the tiny population of Iceland should be forced to bear the full costs of the laxity of Icelandic, British and Dutch regulators and the reckless behaviour of private bankers and risk-takers. “

Read the letter on the FT website here.

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:

EBOR Lecture November 25th (PDF)

25th November, 2009

Dear patient readers of this blog…please find below my latest Huff Post post.

Some may wonder why I cheered when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel announced that the president plans to cut the deficit, because he “does not want to keep on adding to the debt.”

It’s no secret that conservative economists believe that the way to cut the deficit is to cut government spending. In other words, government must manage the federal budget in the same way that you manage your household budget.

But in truth, the president must do the opposite.

To strengthen the levees against the rising tide of debt and the “hurricane of unemployment,” the president must both spend down the debt with a bigger fiscal stimulus, and also get a grip on monetary policy — regulating lending and keeping interest rates low for all of us, not just the banks.

Third, the administration must manage government debt effectively and not leave it to the self-serving and private financial markets.

I am surprised at how often I have to explain why the fiscal stimulus is so important. But because fiscal conservatives just don’t get it, they must be reminded of the well documented evidence again and again.

Government spending, unlike private spending, will pay down the debt by generating income, including tax revenues, and by reducing welfare payments. For unlike private households, governments generate revenues when they spend or invest, particularly on projects at home.

When a household spends its savings on say, a new wind turbine, solar panels for the roof, or insulation, money drains away from the household bank account. The engineers, builders and laborers that construct the turbine don’t pay money back into the householder’s bank account — regrettably.

By contrast, when the federal government invests in jobs that can’t be exported to China, the engineers, builders and laborers employed pay taxes back into the government’s account. They then spend the balance of their incomes in shops and businesses, and these pay taxes too. Indeed the spending might stimulate a small business to invest and hire, adding even more taxpayers paying back into the government’s account.

It’s called the multiplier effect because guess what? It multiplies government revenues. The evidence shows that the increase in revenues outweighs the spending and thus helps cut government debt.

However, it’s not enough to spend away government debt. More must be done, (and this is where Paul Krugman and I part company).

If the president is really determined to not “keep on adding to the debt,” then he must tackle monetary as well as fiscal policy. As John Maynard Keynes repeatedly emphasized, monetary policy must always precede and underpin fiscal policy. They go together like a horse and carriage — you can’t have one without the other.

It is not enough to use public funds to bail out the economy, while at the same time allowing the private banking sector to arbitrarily raise interest rates for government, commercial and household borrowing.

It’s particularly not fair — indeed it’s downright immoral — that the private banking sector is reaping such rich pickings from low rates set by the Federal Reserve; from the struggling body that is the US economy, and from government borrowing.

For proof of the bankers’ rich pickings, study the chart below from the International Monetary Fund. It shows (in pink) the low rates of interest paid by banks to the Fed and other central banks, in contrast to the rates of interest (in green) that the banks then charge to companies, households and individuals.

Note how the rates for those of us active in the real economy are always higher than they are for bankers borrowing direct from the Fed and/or central banks.

Then note how much they diverge after 2008. Bank borrowing costs fall to nothing, while private borrowing costs soar. No wonder bank profits are ballooning.

(The chart is from the IMF’s October 2009 Global Financial Stability Report. The composite real private borrowing rate [RPBR] is a GDP-weighted average of the U.S., Japan, euro area, and U.K. RPBRs.)

The Treasury must get a grip on high rates of interest — rates bankrupting businesses and homeowners, causing foreclosures and unemployment to rise — all “adding to the government debt” by increasing welfare spending.

The administration (through the Treasury, the Fed and the banking system) must adopt policies to force down rates across the spectrum, for government and the private sector; for the commercial and household sector as well as banks; all loans, short-term and long-term, safe and risky.

To stop “adding to the debt” it is vital to keep interest rates very low — while ensuring that lending is ‘tight’ — i.e. well regulated. Today, in the midst of the crisis, money is tight, and it is expensive.

Above all the Treasury must get a grip on its own debt management — and not leave that to the private, self-interested finance markets.

Because after all, bankers have one great way of making capital gains: by “adding to the debt.”

22nd November, 2009

Have just left a great event in Manchester, where about 500 students gathered to sharpen up their campaigning on climate change – under the banner of ‘People and Planet’. Ian Leggett, the organisation’s director, reminded us that Barclays Bank still has a great big hole in its demographic – all those students who, back in the 1980s,  refused to bank with Barclays because of their activities in funding apartheid.

Today the students have a fresh target in their sights. They have pulled together a really smart campaign aimed at a bank in which we British citizens/taxpayers now have an 84% stake – after our government invested £56 billion in bailing out the biggest corporate failure in the history of capitalism.

I refer of course to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Read post »

25th September, 2009.

This was my comment on the conclusion of the Pittsburgh G20 Summit – posted on the Huffington Post.

Today the Summit of world leaders — the G20 — ended in a spirit of good cheer. World leaders are united, they’re confident and they’re looking forward. They have looked closely at the system that crashed, and decided simply to reboot it. It appears we have all been fooled: there is no bug in the operating system that is the international financial architecture. It simply needed to be switched back on.

This they have done. Of course they didn’t just switch it on. They met first in London in April, made a statement, and threw some of our money at the problem. On Friday they made another long statement, a resounding commitment to sustain and defend ‘an open world economy based on ‘price stability’ and market principles.’ And then they vowed to throw more taxpayer money at it.

$6 trillion by the end of next year, since you ask. And just in case more cracks should appear in the architecture, central bank governors will continue to dish out free money (‘expansionary policies’) to the banks — ‘for as long as needed.’

“Taken together,” declared the G20 on Friday, “these actions will constitute the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus and the most comprehensive support program for the financial sector in modern times.”

You heard that the first time. For the financial sector. Not for suckers like you and me.

However, while G20 leaders are confident that the system is sound, they acknowledge that there is one glitch in the works. Bankers’ bonuses.

So they put their minds to what to do about bonuses, and it’s no secret: they disagreed. In the end they decided to do very little. Why? Well, news had filtered through to the conference that bankers were in trouble: they had made only $5.2 billion trading derivatives last quarter. The G20 resolved to bring them back from the brink. All mention of capping bonuses was erased from the Summit Communique.

And then they started putting their money where their mouth is.

As a small contribution to boosting the construction sector, they’re setting up a permanent new office. To cheer up their friends in submerging markets, they’ve appointed additional directors from China, Brazil, etc. Then, to show they’re serious about creating jobs, they’re hiring a few admin staff.

To help the poor of the world, they shuffled the deckchairs on the board of the International Monetary Fund. No doubt this will cheer up those families in drought-stricken Kenya whose babies were snatched by starving hyenas.

Then Gordon Brown rallied all the Mums of Africa and Asia: “We need to work together,” he said, “to make the policy and institutional changes needed to accelerate the convergence of living standards and productivity in developing and emerging economies to the levels of the advanced economies.”

So there you have it. A triumph of leadership and international diplomacy. Expect the global economy to go from strength to strength — and our leaders to go down in history for their courage, their foresight and their wisdom.

And don’t worry your little heads about bugs in the system.

Ann Pettifor: September 24, 2009

As world leaders meet in Pittsburgh and then Istanbul (for the World Bank and IMF meetings) expect much self-congratulation and back-slapping for having got the world through the post-Lehman crisis.

But behind the cacophony of self-praise, watch out for three alarms flashing red:

• The escalating foreclosure and rising mortgage delinquency rates in the US
• The dramatic contraction of credit in the US over the summer – putting paid to any hope of the US acting as the ‘engine’ of a global recovery
• That big accident waiting to happen to the European economies –Spain

With the help of a great new book – about to be published in the US – let’s take a look at why there is no room for complacency.

“No way to run an economy” (Pluto Press, 2009) is by a man whose research and analyses I have come to respect and rely upon – Graham Turner of GFC economics. While the book is full of solid facts and data – it is eminently readable for those prepared to unleash their inner wonk.

Read post »

The Motley Fool, September 2nd, 2009

Motley Fool blogger TMF Sinchiruna spotlights the Times interview, describing me as “once ridiculed, later vindicated…” TMF Sinchiruna goes on to say: “Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Niall Fergusson, Ann Pettifor … these are the voices that I believe investors need to hear. Turn off the tv and look deep into the events of last year and consider for yourselves whether anything more than a hail-mary reflationary maelstrom has been heaped upon the fire that started it all.”

Read the Motley Fool article >

Also just did an interview for You and Yours on Radio 4 which was broadcast Wednesday. You can listen to it here.

From The Times: September 1st

Phil Thornton’s Times interview with me on the economy today.

“The economy is no longer in freefall and, as a result, there’s an enormous amount of complacency from politicians, in particular, about what will happen next. I believe politicians have given away the opportunity to restructure the banks and reconfigure the system.”

Read the interview >

From Open Democracy: August 13, 2009

“A single day, 9 August 2007, will go down in history as ‘Debtonation Day’ – the beginning of the end of the deregulation and privatisation of finance that marks the era of globalisation.”

I wrote these words on 13 August 2007, in anticipation that the great stock-market collapse of four days earlier presaged the end of the era of neo-liberal globalisation.

So it has proved.

Read Open Democracy article>