I’m Ann Pettifor, political economist, author and public speaker. My latest book, The Case for the Green New Deal, was published in hardback by Verso in 2019. By 2020 the book had been translated into German by Hamburger Edition, Italian by Fazi Editore and Swedish by Verbal Forlag. The English paperback version with an added chapter, Afterword, appeared on the shelves of bookstores from September, 2020. The Production of Money, published by Verso in Spring, 2017, explains the nature of money and the monetary system; tackles thorny issues like Bitcoin and QE, and is written to be accessible to a wide audience. It too was translated into German and published by Hamburger Edition and later into Spanish.
Back in 2003, as editor of The Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis. This was followed in September, 2006 by my book predicting the Global Financial Crisis: The Coming First World Debt Crisis published by Palgrave.
Known for my work on sovereign debt and the international financial architecture, I led a campaign, Jubilee 2000, which as part of an international movement resulted ultimately in the cancellation of approximately $100 billion of debt owed by the poorest countries; and in the clearance by the Nigerian government of $30 billion of debt in 2005.
I am Director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) a network of economists that promote Keynes’s monetary theory and policies, and that focus on the role of the finance sector in the economy. We believe that conventional or ‘mainstream’ economic theory has proved of almost no relevance to the ongoing and chronic failure of the global economy and to the gravest threat facing us all: climate change.
Based in London I am fully engaged in ongoing debates about the British and global economy. Together with Professor Victoria Chick, and Dr. Geoff Tily I co-authored PRIME’s radical analysis of 100 years of UK public debt and its impact, in The Economic Consequences of Mr. Osborne (July 2010).
I hold a variety of posts: including as a Council Member of the Progressive Economy Forum, Chair of the advisory board of Goldsmith’s College Political Economy Research Centre; an honorary fellowship at City University’s Political Economy Research Centre, and am also a fellow of the New Economics Foundation. In 2015 the leader of the British Labour Party named me as one of a council of seven economic advisers, and in 2017 Kate Osamor MP appointed me to Labour’s Task Force on international development. I am a trustee of a British organization: Promoting Economic Pluralism (PEP).