This is the original, long version of an article I wrote for the Guardian. The published version was edited down, and appeared on 28th January. This version was written on 11th December, 2017. “If some of us grow rich in our sleep, where do we think this wealth is coming from? It doesn’t materialise out […]
Together with Jeremy Smith of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), I wrote this for the website UnHerd.com, edited by Tim Montgomerie. The site’s aim is “to appeal to people who instinctively refuse to follow the herd and also want to investigate ‘unheard’ ideas, individuals and communities.” The piece begins with this quote from Alice Walker:
In this piece, written for International Politics and Society, I argue that the global investigation into the “Paradise Papers’ has created an opportune moment for wider debate about how the increasingly corrupt and out-of-control global financial system can be tamed. It is time, I argued, that tax-paying citizens recognised their power to create change, and to manage
The year 2015 began with the Chancellor, George Osborne ‘welcoming’ the news that inflation had fallen in December 2014 to 0.5% – more than 1% below the official target. The FT declared that “this is almost certainly ‘good deflation’“. In his subsequent letter to the Chancellor the governor of the Bank of England attributed the
It is wrong to blame China for the global economy’s woes Read More »
I was privileged to be invited by the St. Paul’s Institute to discuss (on the 3rd November, 2015) the thesis in Paul Mason’s recent book PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future with a keynote speech from the author. Mason’s book is both a riveting and intellectually exhilarating read. It challenged me at a range of
Is capitalism “mutating” into an infotech utopia? Read More »
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
The architects of the Euro hung by their own petard Read More »
By Ann Pettifor. An edited version of this piece was published on Left Foot Forward, 14 September, 2011. This original, longer version posted 19 September, 2011. The game is up. The 2007-9 private banking crisis that started with the unpayable debts of the US sub-prime sector, was never over. The crisis has now moved on
The age of liberal finance over. The left’s Plan B? Read More »
Last month I was invited to join the ‘Labour Party Policy Review: Making growth work for the poor and generating resources for development’. The overall group was led by Harriet Harman, and the development section was chaired by Rushnara Ali MP. Below is my short background note on mobility of capital flows, financial crises &
Capital flows, financial crises & implications for poor countries Read More »
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 »
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
