20th September, 2008 I am up ready to listen to the Presidential debate, so thought I would share my letter to the Guardian today. But first, may I beg readers’ tolerance for mixing too many metaphors…
Another financial brick in the wall… letter to the Guardian Read More »
The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, speaking on Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme this morning, repeated something he says regularly: that ‘interest rates are low’ and that his government, through the Bank of England, kept them low. The question the BBC should have asked is this: if interest rates are low, and have been so,
Interest rates, Keynes and the longevity of the rentier Read More »
Hank Paulson, President George Bush’s Treasury Secretary, launched a unilateral plan to save the western banking system last Sunday, then appealed to western governments to bail out their own banks. ‘Fair enough’ one might say. After all, the US’s staunchest and most compliant ally, Britain, actively colluded in the build-up of these massive, and now
Another Anglo-American debacle. This time worse than Iraq. Read More »
The US-centred financial crisis will damage the lives and futures of savers, employees, businesses and consumers across the world. All the more reason to address the systemic failures that led to it, is what I have argued in this piece published on Open Democracy today.
Neo-liberal, conservative economists are fond of blaming this crisis on ‘the housing market’. This way they avoid blame being laid at the door of financial de-regulators (central bank governors, finance ministry officials and elected politicians) or indeed of the finance sector. Instead the blame can be laid on those that took out mortgages, in particular
Mortgages are the least of our problems. Think CDSs Read More »
Lets not make any bones about it. Hank Paulson the US Treasury Secretary’s scheme announced yesterday represents a coup d’etat by the finance sector as Yves Smith rightly argues (21st September). The stakes are high. In a few months time we may have a Democrat President and a less compliant Congress. Right now, with the
Just how much is the finance sector going to cost the US taxpayer and the US economy? Counting the cost of the financial damage in lost homes, lost jobs, lost output, lost pensions, lost investments…..is too challenging a task for this humble analyst. But lets just count the cost in terms of guarantees.
20th September, 2008 In the midst of all this tragedy and chaos, one has to savour the moment. The sight of all those free-market capitalists, trained by economists at the Chicago School of neo-liberalism, handing over to ‘big government’ the financial system of the biggest free market economy in the world.
Where, oh where, are the orthodox economists now? Read More »
19th September, 2008: My comment for the Guardian’s site, part of a debate on the Credit Crunch organised by the new economics foundation, of which I am a fellow… Bankers have gone to great lengths to damage our confidence in the banking sector. And loss of confidence and trust on this scale can’t be fixed
15th September, 2008. To address this very grave global financial crisis effectively, one needs to analyse it correctly. A wrong analysis results in wrong conclusions and solutions, just as a wrong medical diagnosis can lead to wrong, often life-threatening treatment. Orthodox economists, who have for so long turned a blind eye to the finance sector,
