In my contribution to the Green New Deal in July, 2008 I warned that corporate debt defaults were the next “big shoe to fall”. We are all aware of the devastating consequences of defaults by sub-prime borrowers. However their debts are miniscule compared to outstanding corporate debts. Now, I firmly predict,corporate debt defaults are about […]
Appropos the debate about Keynes below Graham Turner of GFC Economics and author of The Credit Crunch, submitted a fascinating article to the FT on this subject. In it he cites the experience of Japan’s failed attempt to kick-start the economy with public works expenditure in the 1990s.
I wrote a piece on Keynes and monetary policy for the Standard, which appeared on Thursday, 23rd October, 2008. You can read it below. Today a group of monetarist economists , supported by a range of bankers, have written to the Telegraph objecting to a public works programme to help economic recovery. They are right
24th October, 2008 The NS has published a short piece this week: “Economists simply would not accept that their model could fail“. An introductory sentence is not mine: “Who would have predicted..that prudent Gordon Brown (would) breach the EU cap on government spending?” Am writing to the NS to ask for a correction to be
22nd October, 2008. I am dictating this piece down the phone from Budapest in Hungary where I have just arrived to deliver a lecture to the Ybl Club. My hosts were in a state of shock on arrival because the central bank of Hungary has just raised interest rates from 8.5% to 11.5%…
21st October, 2008 A new Bretton Woods: To save economies and the planet, we must tame markets,upsize the state, and downsize the global single market. This piece is derived loosely from the book I edited at the new economics foundation “Real World Economic Outlook” (Palgrave, 2006). The proposal for an International Clearing Agency draws on
The World Tonight, Monday 14th October, 2008, 10.38pm. Listen here
Ann Pettifor on BBC Radio 4: Return of Bretton Woods? Read More »
12th October, 2008. The news that Britain’s local authorities may have lost up to a £1 billion in the collapse of Iceland’s banks beggars belief. The competence of their highly paid chief executives must surely be challenged, and powers to borrow on international capital markets curtailed.
Iceland, debt and Laxness, the Nobel Prize Winner Read More »
11th October, 2008. I have had an extraordinary day today, at an event in Bristol organised by the Schumacher Society. Fritz Schumacher – of Small is Beautiful fame – died in 1977, and the Society was formed just thirty years ago, in 1978. Today’s event was hosted by Diana Schumacher and Jonathon Porritt. I was honoured to
11th October, 2008 The sin of usury, diluted by Eck and the Fuggers banking family in the 1500s, ceased to be condemned as a sin after John Calvin (pictured) gave a license to the charging of interest. Usury as a sin should be brought back now, I argue in the columns of the Guardian today. Read the
