Ann Pettifor

Fiscal Conservatives

Britain, Korea and humanity’s life support systems.

This was my contribution to a publication of the Korean Labor Institute, 19th July, 2021 Since 2014 the world has endured the seven hottest years in recorded history. The wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and intense flooding that currently afflict rich and poor countries alike, are, scientists explain, the consequence of this heating. Children, led by Greta […]

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‘Deficit Financing’ or Deficit-Reduction Financing?

Introduction “Deficit financing” in contemporary economics is controversial – largely because of flawed economic approaches to a sovereign nation’s public finances. The first is the microeconomic approach that treats government budget deficits in much the same way as household deficits. In other words, the assumption that like a household, a government budget deficit is the consequence

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The architects of the Euro hung by their own petard

Dear readers…posted this last night, but  failed to add links…so have updated this morning….And now at 12.54 on 28 Nov, following revelations from Bloomberg, am adding in a reference to the extent that Morgan Stanley was bailed out in 2008. A petard, I am reliably informed by the Web, “was a bell-shaped metal grenade typically

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How Ed Balls was trapped…..

Have just been told that my post on the Left Foot Forward on Ed Balls’s speech  crashed the site “under weight of people wanting to read it”…so here it is for those of you that may have missed it…. David Cameron was delighted when the formidable Ed Balls walked straight into his framing of the

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Bankers must be made to serve the economy…..

21 February, 2010 Once again apologies for a longish absence. This is down in part, to smashing (literally) building works, to a little grandchild-minding, and to other writing commitments. But have been itching to comment on a) Greece and the EU b) Iceland (it seems the UK is easing up on the pressure); c) the

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Osborne’s puppet-masters: Société Générale.

15th January, 2009. Patient readers this blog is triggered by Jeff Randall’s column in the Daily Telegraph today. In it he inadvertently discloses the identity of the puppet-masters dictating the Tory political agenda around public spending cuts. In a somewhat histrionic column in which he describes the public deficit as a ‘disaster’ ( he should

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The pre-budget report: bullies in the playground

9th December, 2009 It has been an extraordinary day this day, and something to witness: this frenzy of pre-election fisticuffs. Extraordinary because Conservatives, like mindless bullies, are fighting a phoney war against the victims of this crisis. The fact is the Tories are spineless scaredy cats, too timid to take on the perpetrators, who have

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Green New Deal – ‘The Cuts won’t work’ report is published.

7th December, 2009 This is the press release from the new economics foundation: “Two days ahead of the pre-budget report, and as the UN climate change talks open in Copenhagen – the second report from the authors of the original Green New Deal argues that the British Chancellor is likely to miss a historic opportunity

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Debts and deficits: stocks and flows

6th December, 2009. Most economists (who should know better) confuse the government’s budget deficit with total government debt. The distinction really is important. Mixing them up is a little like confusing stocks and flows.  Or confusing your outstanding mortgage – say £200,000 – with your monthly debt repayments. They are quite different things, and if

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