Ann Pettifor

Bank Bail-outs

No, the Recession is Not Over

Ann Pettifor – 11th June 2009 – For the Guardian Online. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/12/recession-economic-crisis A banker, Alan Clarke of BNP Paribas, citing a NIESR report, confidently tells the Guardian that the recession is over. Should we take the word of any banker – especially one that claims to be an economist – seriously? Given that the economics […]

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A blind spot for Leviathan

4th December 2008 ‘Financial writers’ and establishment economists seem to live in a different world.  They often bring to mind bats, hanging upside down in the cavernous, soaring rafters of a barn, analysing the world from a great distance, and upside-down. Take one Diana Henriques – described as a ‘senior financial writer for the New

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Disarming the Financiers

1st December 2008 Watching our British politicians squabble and spin this last week over the Pre Budget Report – while Rome burns –  was depressing. Why are our politicians so off-beam? Why does their response to this crisis seem so petty and botched? The answer may lie in their ties to the finance sector. The

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Iceland, debt and Laxness, the Nobel Prize Winner

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.

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Rates: the BoE is not independent – it has a political mandate

Both the British Chancellor, Alastair Darling and the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, have been on the radio this morning, resisting the idea that interest rates are political. Instead they have argued, vehemently, that the Bank of England is independent, and that the Bank must decide whether or not to lower interest rates.

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The Credit Crunch and the Green New Deal… in Compass

Wednesday 1st October, 2008 The massive deflation/de-leveraging of credit and debt that is now cascading through the banking system and rapidly deflating the value of housing and other assets in the Anglo-American economies will precipitate large-scale, global economic failure, for years to come. Read more…

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Bring back Keynes… in the Guardian

Tuesday 30th September, 2008. Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. In the US, treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped for $700bn to plug the gaping hole in Wall Street’s banks. In the UK, the government is not

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Bring back cool reasonable voice of Keynes… in the FT

Tuesday 30th September, 2008. Sir, Your editorial “In praise of free markets” (September 27/28) conflates regulation of trade markets with that of financial markets. This is a flawed analysis, one at the core of most economic orthodoxy – that money, like land, oil, soya beans, diamonds or gold, is a commodity, and therefore that trade

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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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