Ann Pettifor

Financial Crisis

Political leaders – Stand up to the bankers, you have only your chains to lose

Markets react rationally to austerity The piece below was posted on the “Left Foot Forward” website on Monday, 8th August, 2011 “It is important that we understand the events of last week not as a new outbreak of crisis, but as a continuation of the banking crisis that first came to the public’s attention in […]

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Financing the Green Transition – why we can afford it

Last month I gave a ‘Green Talk‘ in Bristol, organised by Climate Works. It was wonderful to be, first of all at such a professionally and well organised event (congrats to Mark Letcher and his team). It was also fantastic to be amongst such an interesting array of speakers including John Gapper ‘the secret gardener’

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Savings and the alchemy of credit – my article for Aviva

Aviva has brought together a collection of prominent thinkers to provoke renewed debate and fresh ideas about future prosperity and creating a culture of sustainable savings. The group, names the ‘Future Prosperity Panel‘, published their report ‘Big picture thinking – Towards sustainable savings’. My article is called ‘Savings and the alchemy of credit’ and is published

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Knowles needs to listen more carefully to ‘hero’ Clinton on deficit reduction

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

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Why Krugman’s ‘Keynesianism’ is controversial

Some of our friends were irked by my observation this week that Paul Krugman is: “an extremely controversial figure for Keynes scholars. He champions a mainstream interpretation of Keynes’s work known as the neo-classical synthesis” Many rightly applaud him for using his platform at the New York Times to defend further fiscal stimulus in the

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Bankers: draining funds from taxpayers courtesy of finance ministers

Irish Finance Minister Noonan and Luxembourg Treasury Minister Frieden attend an EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels. Image source: www.reuters.com I find it hard to write about the crisis in Greece….because the tragedy unfolding there is so reminiscent of the tragedies that unfolded in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia in the 80s and

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Austerity: OECD economists show clear signs of ‘cold feet’ for austerity

(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.

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Is the banking system broke, as well as broken?

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

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Coming soon: another global financial crash? Capital mobility and the commodity mania

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

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‘Debtonation’ – why it’s still relevant

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

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