A dust-up at the BBC’s World Service
The World Service invited myself and Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs on to the Business Daily programme today for what they hoped would be an intellectual punch-up. They were not disappointed. Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati had also been invited, but sadly was stuck in a traffic jam so unable to join us in the discussion, and instead was recorded separately…
O’Neill started by positively mocking the ‘peak oil thesis’. Ho, Ho, Ho… never heard anything so crazy he said… He had just read a book by a Californian - with no geological or economic background - calling for transition economies, and had never read such rubbish! “Don’t tell me you believe that peak oil nonsense!” I explained that I had grown up in a gold mining town, whose inhabitants and owners believed that gold would pay their wages and dividends for ever… Not so, mining there dried up in the mid 1990s and iIt turned out that reserves of gold, like oil, are finite. Today, my home town, Welkom in the Orange Free State, is a ghost town. When I asked him why Saudi oil production numbers seemed stuck, and would not budge even under intense pressure from the US, he looked incredulous.
We then moved on to the Credit Crunch - ‘just another periodic crisis’ O’Neill said. He had already lived through five - no big deal, finance sector irrelevant, oil price the real problem, trade powering ahead, global economic growth of 4% forecast for next year…all is sunny and bright in a world in which Chinese and Indian consumers are gearing up to rescue the global economy. The US which has not even entered recession, they will regrettably, but inevitably in his view, shift to the margins of the global economy.
If things are not so bad in the US, I asked, why has unemployment risen every month for the last seven months? And, given a low savings rate, will unemployment not accelerate the build up of debts, arrears and defaults - and trigger another downward spiral of housing market prices? And would not such defaults wreak even greater havoc on the globally integrated financial system?… Naw, he said, you exaggerate… and then rattled off data for retail sales in China these last three months. I challenged these and suggested that Chinese consumption was only 3% of Global GDP and therefore unlikely to substitute for falls in US consumption… “More like 7%” he estimates.
We were asked to look ahead. He regards the current upheavals as a storm that will soon pass. He said it was ridiculous to suggest that this crisis implied sustained economic failure. I said that I was extremely gloomy; that it would take ten years at least to recover from this financial meltdown, that the finance sector had done more to harm the prospects for globalisation than any anti-globalisation protester.
As we prepared to leave the studio, he hurled an insult. Why, if I cared for the poor, did I not study the data? The interview had ended, so I blew my top and accused him of arrogant, patronising conduct. At which point BBC staff ducked for cover under desks…
O’Neill, in my humble opinion, and no opinion could be more humble, is a classic example of an orthodox economist that regards finance as marginal to the economy, who focuses instead on trade and the supply and demand for goods and services - and whose narrow analysis blinkers him to the possibility of prolonged economic failure caused by financial meltdown.
Alternatively he is the pragmatist, focussed on the real world economy, and I am utterly deluded. But in my defence I have this to say: he and most orthodox economists were totally unprepared for ‘debtonation day’ - August 9th, 2007….Unlike yours truly, they failed utterly to predict it, they downplayed it (‘its only the sub-prime sector, won’t spread to other sectors’), they failed to correctly analyse its causes, and many still do not grasp its implications.
Scary… but it was a great dust-up all the same.
Listen to Business Daily on the BBC World Service for the full interview, live on Friday 8th August, 2008, 11.40am GMT, and via their website thereafter.
Tags: BBC World Service, Business Daily, Goldman Sachs, Jim O'Neill
Welcome to my blog about the financial crisis. I'm Ann Pettifor, author and analyst of the global financial system, and co-author of the Green New Deal. I predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis back in 2003, and am known for my work on sovereign debt and international finance, including Jubilee 2000. Currently a fellow of the
6 Responses to “A dust-up at the BBC’s World Service”
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Comment By Stacey Derbinshire on August 7th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Ann Pettifor in action: one of my colleagues in the Green New Deal who takes about as robust a view of things as I do [...]
Comment By Tax Research UK / My del.icio.us bookmarks for August 8th on August 9th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Pleased to find your blog, Ann. I’ve heard good things about you from more than one source.
Can I just comment that Fred Harrison predicted the peak of the UK house/land price bubble and the consequences in his 2005 book Boom Bust: The Great Depression of 2010. He also predicted the previous peak in his 1983 The Power in the Land. Not sure I totally go with his analysis but the land market is undoubtedly intimately involved in the boom/bust cycle and it is amazing that economists continue to have a blind spot about land.
Comment By Carol Wilcox on August 9th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thanks Stacey and Richard for your links the Tax blog and to Google News Reader…much appreciated.
Carol, no I did not know of Fred Harrison’s book…will look out for it.
Ann
Comment By ann on August 11th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Nice work, came across a reference to your book at this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7319. Subscribed, and added to my feed.
Shameless plug: Stop by tickerforum.org to chat with like-minded traders and investors. I first came to understand the implications of this deflationary collapse from Karl Denninger, the site’s owner, and activist trader. He has been organizing his several thousand strong forum membership to lobby US Congress to make better decisions on bailouts and related policy, we could use all the help we can get to publicize his petitions, even from abroad.
Comment By Kurtosis on August 13th, 2008 at 9:06 am
O’Neill started by positively mocking the ‘peak oil thesis’. Ho, Ho, Ho… never heard anything so crazy he said… He had just read a book by a Californian - with no geological or economic background - calling for transition economies, and had never read such rubbish! “Don’t tell me you believe that peak oil nonsense!”
I think the book that Jim is possibly referring to is ‘The Transition Handbook’ by Rob Hopkins.Founder of the Transition movement - started in Kinsale, then taken up by Totnes, Bristol, Isle of Wight etc. etc. and its popularity spreading all over England, Australia and Newzealand. See website: Transition Towns.
Comment By Collette on August 14th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
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