Paul Mason economics editor of the BBC’s Newsnight hosted an interesting event at the Frontline Club on Thursday 7th November. In attendance: Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, Michael Blastland, a freelance writer, Paul Lashmar, and yours truly. The theme was, and I paraphrase: “Why did the media fail to predict the crash? And what can editors do to prevent such myopia in the future?” Self-flagellation was in evidence all evening to the credit of the journalists present.
Archive for the ‘Debt’ Category
Predicting the crash: Did the media fail in its scrutiny?
Graham Turner on Keynes Misunderstood
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.
Keynes and taxpayers’ largesse
I wrote a piece on Keynes and monetary policy for the Standard, which appeared on Thursday, 23rd October, 2008. You can read it below. Today a group of monetarist economists , supported by a range of bankers, have written to the Telegraph objecting to a public works programme to help economic recovery. They are right that excessive liabilities on the government’s balance sheet could cause interest rates to rise, but government spending has a multiplier effect, and very quickly pays for itself. They seem unaware of this economic fact. There is some overlap between our views on monetary policy as an effective tool, but I disagree with their view that UK government spending has been excessive.
A debt spiral we could have avoided
24th October, 2008
The NS has published a short piece this week: “Economists simply would not accept that their model could fail“. An introductory sentence is not mine: “Who would have predicted..that prudent Gordon Brown (would) breach the EU cap on government spending?” Am writing to the NS to ask for a correction to be published.
Central Bankers Add to the Economic Malaise…
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%…
Chasing the money-changers from the temple
11th October, 2008
The sin of usury, diluted by Eck and the Fuggers banking family in the 1500s, ceased to be condemned as a sin after John Calvin (pictured) gave a license to the charging of interest. Usury as a sin should be brought back now, I argue in the columns of the Guardian today.
Rates: the BoE is not independent - it has a political mandate
Both the British Chancellor, Alastair Darling and the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, have been on the radio this morning, resisting the idea that interest rates are political. Instead they have argued, vehemently, that the Bank of England is independent, and that the Bank must decide whether or not to lower interest rates.
The Credit Crunch and the Green New Deal… in Compass
Wednesday 1st October, 2008
The massive deflation/de-leveraging of credit and debt that is now cascading through the banking system and rapidly deflating the value of housing and other assets in the Anglo-American economies will precipitate large-scale, global economic failure, for years to come.
Bring back Keynes… in the Guardian
Tuesday 30th September, 2008.
Anglo-American finance ministers and central bankers, like little Dutch boys, try desperately to plug leaks in the bursting dyke that is the international financial system. In the US, treasury secretary Hank Paulson hoped for $700bn to plug the gaping hole in Wall Street’s banks. In the UK, the government is not just plugging holes, but setting aside competition rules to encourage the monopolisation of finance.
Alan Greenspan’s audacity
Lawmakers in the US struggle to come to terms with the scale of the financial crisis, the Paulson solution, and the role of government in resolving this crisis. Republicans, particularly conflicted, sabotaged the $700 billion bail-out last Thursday. At this moment Alan Greenspan proferrs advice from the lofty heights of the pedestal he still, astonishingly, stands on. “As a practical matter” he and others write in the Wall St. Journal (26.09.08) and “at the current stage of the crisis, the only way that financial institutions can continue to function is for the government to provide financial support.”
Ann Pettifor is a political economist and author of 'The Coming First World Debt Crisis' (Palgrave, 2006) and editor of 'The Real World Economic Outlook' (Palgrave, 2003). She is a fellow of the