Ann Pettifor

Credit Crunch

Why the EU’s leaked document has got me in a rage

By Ann Pettifor – Posted March 16th on Labour List Together with the Prime Minister of Greece, Mr. George Papandreou, I am going to give evidence to the EU’s Special Committee on the Financial Crisis in Brussels this Thursday, March 18th. So today’s leaked report from the EU, arguing that Labour’s plans for cuts to […]

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After Iceland’s Referendum, What Next?

4th March 2010 With Saturday’s Iceland referendum due in just a couple of days (6th March), Advocacy International’s directors have an op-ed article critical of the UK and Netherlands governments in today’s Morgunbladid, Iceland’s main daily newspaper. English version> Icelandic version> Press release> Full text of the article: So the negotiations have broken down, British

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Unjust for Iceland to Take Sole Responsibility

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

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Debts and deficits: stocks and flows

6th December, 2009. Most economists (who should know better) confuse the government’s budget deficit with total government debt. The distinction really is important. Mixing them up is a little like confusing stocks and flows.  Or confusing your outstanding mortgage – say £200,000 – with your monthly debt repayments. They are quite different things, and if

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The Treasury Privatised

29 October, 2009 Dan Roberts has a great column in the Guardian today. He asks the right questions. First, why is the Treasury spending £8 billion of taxpayers money reinflating the housing market? Second, why is the Treasury encouraging this now nationalised bank to increase mortgage lending, when the productive sector of the economy – companies,

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No way to run an economy

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

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Are bankers intermediaries between savers and investors?

Ann Pettifor: September 3rd, 2009 I have just listened to the excellent Dr. Paul Woolley on Radio 4’s the Today programme…He of the aptly named Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunction – like it.  But what bothered me was his remark that the finance sector only acts as ‘intermediary’ between those with savings

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The Motley Fool, plus You and Yours on Radio 4

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

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Times: Worst of slump yet to come, says economist

Article Published in the Times, September 1st 2009. Photo by Jon Enoch. Ann Pettifor predicted a painful end to the good times. Now she says that only radical action can prevent further gloom Phil Thornton Ann Pettifor is a member of a select club — the seers who saw it all coming. Now the economist,

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How globalisation ends: Debtonation Day, plus two

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

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