8th January, 2009 This piece appeared on the Guardian’s Comment site: “Today the people of Iceland, a country whose population, at 317,000, is somewhat smaller than Leicester’s, are required by the British political, financial and economic establishment to carry the full burden of the losses suffered by Landsbanki’s depositor programme Icesave. We consider this to …
27 October, 2009 I promised to explain – to Alastair, a reader of this blog – the link made earlier between 1945 and today’s supposed government ‘debt crises’. Sorry if its a little long – but a promise is a promise. I consider the scaremongering around government debt to be nothing more than an over-egged …
1945, government debt, bond markets, sterling – and all that. Read More »
From Open Democracy: August 13, 2009 “A single day, 9 August 2007, will go down in history as ‘Debtonation Day’ – the beginning of the end of the deregulation and privatisation of finance that marks the era of globalisation.” I wrote these words on 13 August 2007, in anticipation that the great stock-market collapse of …
How globalisation ends: Debtonation Day, plus two Read More »
De Standaard: Brussels 18th June, 2009. Interview:Ann Pettifor over de ‘Green New Deal’ — BRUSSEL – De westerse overheden moeten dringend de hand aan de ploeg slaan en de almacht van de financiële sector inperken. Dat vindt Ann Pettifor, econome en activiste. Van onze redacteur Weg met de banken, leve de overheid. Als je het …
15th December, 2008 Last week there were several media pieces that mentioned the Green New Deal, including The Times, The Observer, and The Independent on Sunday. Also, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has followed his colleagues at UNEP in calling for a Green New Deal. You can also read nef’s Green New Deal Round-up here.
6th December 2008 The tears of millions of Americans stripped of livelihoods and healthcare remain hidden from view, unlike the tearful special pleading of the unscrupulous leaders of the finance sector, and this week, of the auto industry CEO’s. The latest unemployment numbers to emerge from the Dept. of Labor imply immense pain and anguish; …
The tears of the unemployed, of auto CEOs and bankers Read More »
1st December 2008 Watching our British politicians squabble and spin this last week over the Pre Budget Report – while Rome burns – was depressing. Why are our politicians so off-beam? Why does their response to this crisis seem so petty and botched? The answer may lie in their ties to the finance sector. The …
Appropos the debate about Keynes below Graham Turner of GFC Economics and author of The Credit Crunch, submitted a fascinating article to the FT on this subject. In it he cites the experience of Japan’s failed attempt to kick-start the economy with public works expenditure in the 1990s.
22nd October, 2008. I am dictating this piece down the phone from Budapest in Hungary where I have just arrived to deliver a lecture to the Ybl Club. My hosts were in a state of shock on arrival because the central bank of Hungary has just raised interest rates from 8.5% to 11.5%…
21st October, 2008 A new Bretton Woods: To save economies and the planet, we must tame markets,upsize the state, and downsize the global single market. This piece is derived loosely from the book I edited at the new economics foundation “Real World Economic Outlook” (Palgrave, 2006). The proposal for an International Clearing Agency draws on …
