5th February 2010
My conversation earlier this week with Elena Sisti – of Italy’s Altreconomia on macro-economics, reform of the finance sector, money, and yes, how we women have left the all-important matter of finance to the boys. Big mistake. It’s time to get in there, and exercise influence. Too much is at stake. 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 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>
Ann Pettifor – 11th June 2009 – For the Guardian Online.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/12/recession-economic-crisis
A banker, Alan Clarke of BNP Paribas, citing a NIESR report, confidently tells the Guardian that the recession is over. Should we take the word of any banker – especially one that claims to be an economist – seriously?
Given that the economics profession was blind-sided by the ‘debtonation’ of 9th August, 2007, I am deeply sceptical. Second, given that this is a banker-induced recession; that reckless and often fraudulent behaviour by bankers led to a loss of $60 trillion of yours and my wealth (in the form of pensions, equities, lost interest on savings, and lost income from job losses) last year, should we believe a banker’s particular spin on the crisis?
Read post »
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.
Read post »
4th December 2008
‘Financial writers’ and establishment economists seem to live in a different world. They often bring to mind bats, hanging upside down in the cavernous, soaring rafters of a barn, analysing the world from a great distance, and upside-down. Take one Diana Henriques – described as a ’senior financial writer for the New York Times‘. She was on the Rachel Maddow Show on US TV last night, reviewing the gargantuan $700 billion bail-out of US banks. In defence of the opaque and unaccountable activities of the Treasury team dishing out taxpayer largesse she said this: “No-one could lay out a war-game for this (crisis) in advance”. (Ehem, correction: some were well prepared, and could have.) But it was the next remark that took my breath away:
Read post »