October 13th, 2011
The New Statesman has included a contribution from yours truly to this week’s edition. The cover of the magazine declares: “Austerity has failed. Inside nine of the world’s top economists tell the Chancellor how to save Britain. This is Plan B.”
Exclusively for my readers, the following is the unedited version.
How to move to Plan B from where we are: an economy buried in debt by the City of London, and macerated by ‘austerity’ policies? An economy that daily generates insecurity and fear.
First we will have to acknowledge that lessons have not been learned. That austerity is, once again, the wrong remedy for the disease of ongoing financial breakdown, excessive private debt and private sector paralysis.
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October 5th, 2011
Thanks to all those who came along to the “Debunking Economics” event last night, and especially to Steve Keen for such an engaging presentation and to Prof. Victoria Chick for making it possible.
For those of you who couldn’t make it Steve will be posting a video of the event in the next four days, so look out for that on his site.
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October 3rd, 2011
Tomorrow 4th October, at 6.30 p.m. at the UCL Gustave Wilkes Lecture Theatre – where we will be gathering for a discussion on “Delusional Economics: views from inside and outside the profession.” Navigational instructions here.
To be sure of a place, please register with: info@primeeconomics.org
The event is hosted by Prime economics and will also be the venue for the launch of Steve Keen’s new book: “Debunking economics“.
Look forward to seeing you there.
September 26th, 2011
Wangari Maathai (1 April, 1940 0 25 September, 2011) was a dear friend, a beautiful woman that was also one of the world’s great leaders. My heart goes out to her children, whose loss is so great.
Wangari stands shoulder to shoulder with Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere as one of Africa’s – and the world’s – wisest and most effective leaders.
I was privileged to know her as a friend; and as a colleague (when she invited me to Princeton University during her sabbatical year there). But above all I was privileged to work closely with her during the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Not only was she Jubilee 2000′s representative in Kenya, but she helped lead the Jubilee 2000 Africa campaign. And then in March, 1999 she came to London to address a huge meeting that Jubilee 2000′s supporters had mobilised at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that was also addressed by Chancellor Gordon Brown. I remember that visit well. On arrival she told me that she doubted she would ever visit Britain again, because of the way in which she had been interrogated at airport customs. Fortunately she was not to be daunted by British racism and, just two years ago, on one of her many trips to Europe, this picture was taken. We were trying to arrange for her to address another event – this time Operation Noah’s pre-Copenhagen event at Southwark Cathedral with Archbishop Rowan Williams. Sadly, but by then her schedule was so heavy, it proved impossible.
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September 22nd, 2011
Below please find a piece I wrote on the vulnerability of Australia’s banks to problems in the Eurozone. It has appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s site here.
Readers please note: Australia’s is not the only central bank to outsource the funding of its banks to the private sector. European governments have done the same. Greece, Ireland, Spain etc do not, like the UK, have their own domestic central bank, serving the interests of the domestic economy. Instead they have a central bank, the ECB, that is forbidden by statute from providing liquidity to banks and governments. These are instead obliged to borrow from foreign private banks in the Eurozone, the US and Asia. A lucrative trade the banks welcomed until the loans turned sour.
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September 19th, 2011
By Ann Pettifor. An edited version of this piece was published on Left Foot Forward, 14 September, 2011. This original, longer version posted 19 September, 2011.
The game is up. The 2007-9 private banking crisis that started with the unpayable debts of the US sub-prime sector, was never over. The crisis has now moved on to include the unpayable debts of sovereigns owed to private European bankers. It is increasingly clear that there is declining political and institutional support for further private bank bailouts. The dramatic resignation on Friday 9th September of Jürgen Stark, architect of Europe’s equivalent of the Gold Standard – the Growth and Stability Pact – marks an important step in the resistance to bailouts by the ECB; in the inevitable collapse of the Maastricht Pact, and with it, the utopian vision of the neoliberal Euro.
And so the age of liberalised, de-regulated finance appears to be over – at least in Europe. That is the conclusion of investors in both Wall St and the City of London and explains the collapse of confidence in banks and the volatility of stock markets as investors rush for the exits, transferring speculative gains into the safety of government bonds.
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September 15th, 2011
So, five of the world’s biggest central banks have decided on co-ordinated action to bail out – once again – the European private banking sector. In other words, central bankers are hoping to shore up private bankers, help their defer their losses, and prevent them being disciplined by market forces for their reckless lending to EU sovereigns.
Shareholders and investors in these banks must be delighted. Once again, reckless speculation and lending has paid off. Once again the world’s taxpayers have ridden to the rescue.
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September 11th, 2011
Stunning as Sydney Harbour may be, it was the politics that riveted my attention as I flew out of the historic, watery and lively capital of the ‘Lucky Country’. I had spent the morning before my flight indulging in a little tourism. We walked the path named after the good-hearted wife of the 1830s Governor General: Mrs McQuarrie’s Road. It circles a beautiful park and lines the harbour. There, my host, Peter Murphy and I happened upon the vast tanker pictured above.
Commissioned to deal with about 500 asylum seekers that head, it is estimated, each month for the Oz coast (6,789 arrived in 2010 compared to e.g. 1.75 million refugees in Pakistan) it seems big enough and ugly enough for the grisly task of hauling people off leaky boats or out of the sea, and then screening. As Peter noted, naming it Customs and Border Protection is a tautology: Customs is border protection.
Prime Minister Gillard has called a special cabinet meeting for Monday, 12th September, and all the signs are that she is about to do a deal with a rabidly right-wing and racist opponent in order to keep asylum seekers from stepping by boat on to this vast territory she governs precariously. (These refugees are less than 50% of Australia’s annual total. The rest arrive by plane, but don’t seem to invite the same sort of moral panic.) The ‘White Australia’ policy of the past seems to be rearing its ugly head again.
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September 6th, 2011
It has been a busy week in Australia – I will be posting in more detail very soon. But for now you can listen to an interview with me on ABC Radio National Breakfast:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2011/3310691.htm
For any of you in Sydney – come along to the Catalyst event: ‘Making the boom pay… if not now, when?‘. I will be speaking along with others, more details are here:
http://www.catalyst.org.au/catalyst/.
September 2nd, 2011
The picture above is not of some Regency building in Brighton, England. It is in fact the oldest (or so I was told) Trades Union Hall in the world – the Melbourne Trades Hall. Sure is impressive, and with a lovely relaxed, unbureaucratic feel to it….
We were up at the crack of dawn to fly to Melbourne from Adelaide…newspapers full of the crisis inside the Labor government. Julie Gillard looks to be in deep trouble over the handling of Australia’s policy on refugees. And then found the appalling tale of Babcock and Brown – Australia’s biggest ever corporate collapse – the Ned Kellys of this age…only Ned Kelly could never have dreamed of looting so much ‘swag’. And Kelly – whose remains have just been unearthed (see here) – was at least caught by competent Aussie cops at the time, and tried by a competent judge. As the Sydney Morning Herald noted, the Aussie ‘watchdog’ didn’t even sniff Babcock and Brown….
Went straight from the airport to the fine Melbourne university campus for a meeting with climate and sustainability scientists and university trade union officials – to talk about financing the transformation of the economy away from fossil fuels….Not at my best after a night of fitful sleep…Then, after a nap, a wonderful evening at the above mentioned Trades Hall – it was titled Babbling in the Bar -but was in fact a lively discussion of economic policy, the financial system and the policies that Australian trades unionists should be demanding of their Labour government…..From there to the famous Lygon Street,Melbourne’s ‘Little Italy’ – for dinner at – a Vietnamese….times are a’ changin in Melbourne. And finally, after a ride on a tram and train ….sleep!
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In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote:
Click here to read the full story in openDemocracy
BOOKS:
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