Ann Pettifor

Anglo-American Financial Crisis

Interest rates, Keynes and the longevity of the rentier

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, speaking on Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme this morning, repeated something he says regularly: that ‘interest rates are low’ and that his government, through the Bank of England, kept them low. The question the BBC should have asked is this: if interest rates are low, and have been so, […]

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Where, oh where, are the orthodox economists now?

20th September, 2008 In the midst of all this tragedy and chaos, one has to savour the moment.  The sight of all those free-market capitalists, trained by economists at the Chicago School of neo-liberalism,  handing over to ‘big government’ the financial system of the biggest free market economy in the world.

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Comrade Paulson, nationalised banks & socialism for the rich.

You have to admire the spin.  The US Treasury Secretary, Comrade Hank Paulson, pictured here, announced  today, Sunday 7th September, 2008  that the US government is natonalising two huge US banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Which means in effect that Comrade Paulson is  socialising the losses of the shareholders and investors in these banks

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The Bankers’ Recession and the £200 billion bail-out

A Mr. David Smith in a letter to the Financial Times, (29 Aug 08) has suggested we brand this global recession ‘the bankers’ recession’.  He has my support and enthusiastic commitment to raising awareness of the brand.  Especially after today’s UK news.

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Ratcheting up the interest rate rack of torture.

In this big bad world of the Credit Crunch, powerful central bankers – civil servants all – have bent over backwards to help powerful and rich private bankers. On one day, ‘debtonation day’, central bankers in Europe and the US pumped an eye-watering $150 billion into the financial system, to keep big banks afloat. According

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What have Putin, Hu & Greenspan in common?

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

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A dust-up at the BBC’s World Service

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.

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Fannie and Freddie impact will be global, systemic

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,

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The G8 and Bankers: Lessons from the 20s and 80s

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

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