Have been listening to debates about the conflict in Georgia over the week-end. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Putin’s disregard for democracy. In a similar vein, western commentary about President Hu Jintao’s Olympic Games is never complete without some tut-tutting about democracy and human rights in China. Yet these leaders […]
Listen to Business Daily on the BBC World Service, live on Friday 8th August, 2008, 11.40am GMT, and via their website thereafter. The World Service invited myself and Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs on to the Business Daily programme today for what they hoped would be an intellectual punch-up. They were not disappointed.
Fulfilling my duties as a citizen, I am now confined to the Southwark Crown Court as a juror, so have little time to update the blog. However the effective insolvency of two US government sponsored banks or enterprises (GSEs) – Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac – will now impact not just all those US individuals,
Fannie and Freddie impact will be global, systemic Read More »
Open Democracy, 7th July, 2008. The precedent of the United States’s great depression and Japan’s post-bubble collapse should haunt today’s G8 summiteers, writes Ann Pettifor in Open Democracy. Japan hosts the G8 summit in the northern island of Hokkaido on 7-9 July 2008 at a time when its prolonged period of deflation and economic failure
The G8 and Bankers: Lessons from the 20s and 80s Read More »
The FT reports today on a debate economists are having with the Bank of England (BoE). To summarise: the Bank of England does not seem bothered by falling house prices; economists are. This is a very important debate for all those that have debts – because while house prices are falling, the debts on those
Debtors (and banks?) ‘crucified’ on inflation cross Read More »
My friend the formidable economist, Mark Weisbrot put it most succinctly. “Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like
by Ann Pettifor, 22nd May, 2008. There has been much huffing and puffing in the financial media about Horst Kohler’s comments that financial markets have become “a monster” that must “be put back in its place”. The German president who was MD of the IMF from 2000-2004, compared bankers with alchemists who were responsible for
By Ann Pettifor, Open Democracy, 11th December, 2007 On 9 August 2007, globalisation’s rickety financial levees were broken by a storm-surge of debt, invisible to most punters, but scary enough to frighten bankers. This debt includes highly leveraged corporate debt traded on secondary markets, household mortgages, credit-card debts, car loans and other substantial outlays. But
