This morning I joined the Guardian’s panel of Martin Kettle, Len McCluskey and Matthew Oakley to give our verdict on today’s GDP numbers: Ann Pettifor: “The Chancellor must eat humble pie” The statisticians, clutching at straws, blamed the victims – the British people – for the measly 0.2% growth in GDP. It turns out we are too fond of holidaying […]
The austerity brigade is rattled. Young Daniel Knowles over at the Daily Telegraph is so worried, he has had to rise to the defence of the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility – and then resorts to proposing Greece’s economic strategy for the UK. Why? Because orthodox economic ideology has been challenged by none other than Daniel’s
Knowles needs to listen more carefully to ‘hero’ Clinton on deficit reduction Read More »
Unemployment poster ‘jobless men keep going, we can’t take care of our own’, 1931. We write to encourage you – to urge you on in your resistance. In your defiance, you understand Greece is slave to the interests of private wealth. You must understand too that it is private wealth that needs Greece. Greece does
An open letter to the people of Greece: restore the Drachma Read More »
(Photo: REUTERS / Yiorgos Karahalis ) A Greek riot policeman stands in front of graffiti written on the wall of a bank during violent demonstrations over austerity measures in Athens, May 5, 2010. Greece faced a day of violent protests and a nationwide strike by civil servants outraged by the announcement of draconian austeristy measures.
Austerity: OECD economists show clear signs of ‘cold feet’ for austerity Read More »
Much of the news of the last few weeks – the financialised commodities mania; the disgraceful abuse by the banks of payment protection insurance; the mortgage fraud which led US banks to rush through foreclosures without proper process and evict people from their homes;and their decision reported in the WSJ to offer a miserly $5 billion to
Tin produced at a Glencore plant in Vinto, Bolivia “Experience shows that when policies falter in managing capital flows, there is no limit to the damage that international finance can inflict on an economy.” Yilmaz Akyüz, “Capital Flows to Developing Countries in a Historical Perspective: Will the current Boom End with a Bust?” Today, as
Coming soon: another global financial crash? Capital mobility and the commodity mania Read More »
Welcome readers, to my newly refreshed blog, and thanks to Georgia Lee and Maz Kessler for making it look so good, and work so well. I had thought that the title needed refreshing too. After all, I am fond of defining 9th August, 2007 as ‘debtonation day’, and that is now long past. To refresh
Posted on the Huffington Post today: The disaster in Japan is almost beyond comprehension. Without minimizing the scale of the humanitarian tragedy, it is already possible to discern the emerging economic debate. Stock markets immediately anticipated the potential benefits to Japan’s construction industries and their suppliers. Policy makers in the U.K. and Europe, who are
If Japan Can Address Her Crises, Then the U.S. Can Address Job and Energy Insecurity Read More »
Below is a short paper I wrote as part of work with Sir David King and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment: “We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend. London is one of the richest cities in the history of civilization, but
4th March 2010 With Saturday’s Iceland referendum due in just a couple of days (6th March), Advocacy International’s directors have an op-ed article critical of the UK and Netherlands governments in today’s Morgunbladid, Iceland’s main daily newspaper. English version> Icelandic version> Press release> Full text of the article: So the negotiations have broken down, British
