27 October, 2009

I promised to explain – to Alastair, a reader of this blog -  the link made earlier between 1945 and today’s supposed government ‘debt crises’.  Sorry if its a little long – but a promise is a promise.

I consider the scaremongering around government debt to be nothing more than an over-egged and salted buttermilk pudding dished up by the economic quackery of the Her Majesty’s Opposition.  Not unlike that ancient remedy for (verbal) diarrhoea, it is intended to induce intellectual constipation – in those that absorb it in spoonfuls at the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Treasury and City of London.

We should have nothing to do with such childish prescriptions.

To illuminate and evidence my point let me offer you (below) a chart – with data provided by Her Majesty’s Treasury (Public finances databank, Table A10 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/public_finances_databank.xls)  and with thanks to my colleagues in the Green New Deal group.

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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>

De Standaard:  Brussels 18th June, 2009.

Interview:Ann Pettifor over de ‘Green New Deal’ — BRUSSEL -
De westerse overheden moeten dringend de hand aan de ploeg slaan en de almacht van de financiële sector inperken. Dat vindt Ann Pettifor, econome en activiste.

Van onze redacteur

Weg met de banken, leve de overheid. Als je het gedachtegoed van Ann Pettifor in zeven woorden zou moeten samenvatten, zou het ongeveer zo klinken. Pettifor is het meest bekend als drijvende kracht achter Jubilee 2000, de campagne om de schulden van de ontwikkelingslanden grotendeels kwijt te schelden. Een campagne die een succesvolle apotheose kreeg toen de G8 in 1999 besloot om 100 miljard dollar van deze schulden af te schrijven. Nu werkt Pettifor, die al in 2003 in het boek ‘The Credit Crunch’ waarschuwde voor de komende kredietcrisis , voor de Londense denktank New Economics Foundation. Die heeft het rapport ‘AGreen New Deal’ uitgegeven. De titel verwijst naar de New Deal waarmee president Roosevelt de crisis van de jaren30 aanpakte. De daadkracht en voortvarendheid van toen is nu schrijnend afwezig, vindt ze. Pettifor was deze week op uitnodiging van het tijdschrift Mo* in Brussel om haar plan toe te lichten, en erover in debat te gaan met VBO-voorzitter Thomas Leysen

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15th December, 2008

Last week there were several media pieces that mentioned the Green New Deal, including The Times, The Observer, and The Independent on Sunday.

Also, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has followed his colleagues at UNEP in calling for a Green New Deal.

You can also read nef’s Green New Deal Round-up here.

6th December 2008

The tears of millions of Americans stripped of livelihoods and healthcare remain hidden from view, unlike the tearful special pleading of the unscrupulous leaders of the finance sector, and this week, of the auto industry CEO’s. The latest unemployment numbers to emerge from the Dept. of Labor imply immense pain and anguish; and emotional, mental, familial and even social breakdown.  For those of us in other G8 countries cushioned by a public health service that is still, mercifully, largely free, it is hard to imagine how Americans cope with the shock of losing a job, and also their health care. As we await Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 speech becomes more and more striking for its relevance. I have used it often, but do so again, unashamedly.

But first, a brief whinge: on successive visits to the US, I have struggled to get biographies and speeches by FDR. I hope that is changing. US citizens should be proud of the fact that a time of grave global financial crisis, when Europe moved to the right, towards fascism, the United States, under Roosevelt’s leadership, moved in a progressive direction.

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1st December 2008

Watching our British politicians squabble and spin this last week over the Pre Budget Report – while Rome burns –  was depressing. Why are our politicians so off-beam? Why does their response to this crisis seem so petty and botched?

The answer may lie in their ties to the finance sector. The fact is we are experiencing what will be a prolonged Bankers’ Depression – born in the City of London, not in the US sub-prime market. Neither of our major political parties is willing to admit that; to analyse the crisis in those terms and therefore to lay the blame on the finance sector and to rein it in. They are too compromised.

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Appropos the debate about Keynes below Graham Turner of GFC Economics and author of The Credit Crunch, submitted a fascinating article to the FT on this subject. In it he cites the experience of Japan’s failed attempt to kick-start the economy with public works expenditure in the 1990s.

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22nd October, 2008.

I am dictating this piece down the phone from Budapest in Hungary where I have just arrived to deliver a lecture to the Ybl Club. My hosts were in a state of shock on arrival because the central bank of Hungary has just raised interest rates from 8.5% to 11.5%…

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21st October, 2008

A new Bretton Woods: To save economies and the planet, we must tame markets,upsize the state, and downsize the global single market.  This piece is derived loosely from the book I edited at the new economics foundation “Real World Economic Outlook” (Palgrave, 2006). The proposal for an International Clearing Agency draws on John Maynard Keynes’ proposal for an International Clearing Union, but also on additional insights by Jane D’Arista of the Financial Markets Center in the US.

Read more here…