13th March, 2020
Dear Mr. Bailey,
Your predecessor in a speech in 2019 outlined the deficiencies of the International Monetary and Financial System (IMFS).
The IMFS was cobbled together after the collapse of Bretton Woods and the 1971 Nixon Shock, and is governed effectively by Wall St. and the City of London – ‘citizens of nowhere’. They use financial firepower to influence the law, technocratic policy-making, exchange rates, taxation and market interest rates. The BoE uses its powers to accommodate these interests, and monetise the liabilities of shadow banking markets. The public authority to do so is a power that technocrats and civil servants derive from Britain’s 30 million taxpayers that provide the Bank with valuable ‘collateral.’
As the IMFS is of vital importance to the prosperity and stability of the British economy there is an urgent need, in the words of Governor Carney to “change the game.”
I urge you to make “changing the game” the central mission of your governorship.
Ann Pettifor
Director, Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME)