Ann Pettifor

Credit Creation

QE: How the World Got Hooked on Magicked-Up Money

Going cold turkey would finish off a dysfunctional global financial system that’s now hopelessly addicted to emergency infusions. The only solution is surgery on the system itself.The system, notionally governed by the invisible hand of the market, is no longer governed in any meaningful way: private excess puffs up bubbles that government indulgence ensures can never burst. We seem condemned to volatile commodity prices, wild capital flows, worsening imbalances in trade, taxation and income, and—before long—the next sovereign debt crisis.

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Globalisation, a pandemic and the US dollar

As published on Progressive International  on Monday, 11 May, 2020 She said, “My name’s Flo, and you’re on the right track But look here, daddy, I wear furs on my back So if you want to have fun in this man’s land Let Lincoln and Jackson start shaking hands I reached in my pocket, and

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The City of London’s distress because real change may be coming…

Alarm bells are distress signals. As this election campaign reaches its climax the Financial Times registers high levels of investor distress as its wealthy readers panic over the possibility that real change is coming. The change they fear is not automation and AI. No, it’s the possibility that “If Labour come to power on this

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How governments finance their spending (and its not from taxation).

Readers of this blog may know that Patrick Allen, founder of the Progressive Economy Forum (PEF) invited me to become a member of its distinguished Council in July this year. Other members include Professors John Weeks, Joseph Stiglitz, Stephany Griffiths-Jones, Robert Skidelsky, Daniela Gabor, Danny Darling, Ha Joon Chang and Doctors Johnna Montgomery, Geoff Tily,

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The Future of Money: An Interview with Ann Pettifor

This interview with Dr. Ian Cosh appeared on the Misc magazine website on 29 August, 2018 We tend to think of money as a cultural artifact that has evolved from stone disks and precious metals into modern currencies that are becoming increasingly digital. According to Ann Pettifor, a UK-based economist and director of Policy Research

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From Prospect Magazine: There Can Never Be A Market in Money

Prospect magazine’s April 14, 2018 edition ignited a debate between orthodox and heterodox economists. It also included a page titled:   In my contribution I tried to explain the nature of money. Not sure I succeeded. Anyway, here it is: “Unlike the prices of bitcoins or gold, the price of money is not determined by

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Reining in Public Debts or Challenging Democracies?

Last week I gave a talk in Brussels at a debate moderated by Pierre Defraigne, Executive Director of the Madariaga – College of Europe Foundation. It was A Citizen’s Controversy with Lars Feld, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Freiburg and Member of the German Council of Economic Experts. Below is my slideshow

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Osborne: Speaking truth to wealth and power? Really?

George Osborne was presumably aiming at himself and his friends, when he vowed “to speak truth to power and wealth” at the Tory party conference this week, but dare he speak economic truth to the rest of us? – simultaneously published on Left Foot Forward > On the narrowest of bases, he might still claim

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Greece as Whipping Boy for ‘Troika’ Bullies

Simultaneously posted on the Huffington Post US > As mayhem breaks out on stock markets; as Eurozone banks freeze up; and as the global financial system approaches a frightening ‘danger zone,’ the champions of the globalised ‘free market’ and of the Euro are in search of a scapegoat. Instead of accepting that it is the

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