Ann Pettifor: Debtonation

Today, 6th February, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, 1918, which gave SOME women the right to vote. (For more on this follow the link to the Fawcett Society’s website.) To honour that anniversary, the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.) was run and presented by women, with an all-women cast of interviewees. I was honoured to be invited to discuss the position of women in high level posts, and in the economics profession, and was joined...

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: “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Today, the world is confronted by globe-spanning,...

I wrote a piece for the Saturday (26 January 2018) Guardian. Its been described by many as “counter-intuitive” – because in it I draw on the research of others (notably that of Ian Mulheirn – director of consulting at Oxford Economics)  to argue that building more houses will not dampen house prices. I posed this question: “what has bitcoin mania got in common with house prices, especially in the capital? For starters, both are speculative bubbles. Vast sums of money have been poured...

Ann Pettifor joined a #NovaraFM podcast, with James Butler and Grace Blakeley of IPPR,  to discuss the decline and fall of Carillion, outsourcing, financialisation – and how to transform public investment in Britain. To listen, follow this link. Related Posts

Ann Pettifor was invited by the BBC’s PM radio programme  to discuss the fallout from the collapse of Carillion with Daniel Mahoney, Deputy Director and Head of Economic Research at the Centre for Policy Studies. To listen to the interview and discussion (at the top of the show) please follow this link. Related Posts

This opinion piece appeared in the Observer on 17th December, 2017.  While the Daily Mail, with Pavlovian regularity, persists in ringing the “Marxist” alarm bell, the Financial Times is a little more measured. “Labour has a fair wind” with business leaders the paper argued recently “with many terrified of a hard Brexit”. At Britain’s biggest industry conference (the CBI) in November, business leaders gave Jeremy Corbyn a distinctly warmer welcome than that given to Theresa May, the...

The Financial Times questioned economists for its annual publication of economic forecasts: “With unemployment at a 40-year low, how much of a pay rise will British workers get in 2018?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/98ce5e72-ebd9-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23)  PRIME economists responded thus: The fall in real wages while employment has fallen and employment has risen is a consequence of sustained hyper-globalisation policy in which much of the labour force is now obliged to compete...

The Financial Times asked economists the following: How far will the Bank of England raise interest rates next year? Do you think they should? PRIME economists responded in this way: We think much will depend on the Federal Reserve and the ECB. The BoE will follow both, but will have time to assess the impact of global tightening. We do not think that rate rises would be wise at a time of weak demand, low productivity and heavy corporate and consumer indebtedness. Thanks to austerity,...

PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) economists were asked by the FT “How fast do you think the UK economy will grow in 2018 and how will this compare to other countries?” (See here: https://www.ft.com/content/ceb165ee-ebb5-11e7-bd17-521324c81e23) We replied as follows: The end of 2017 witnessed, in our view, the top of the global asset bubble. Rupert Murdoch’s decision to dispose of 21st Century Fox was a clear indication that the bubble had peaked. Bitcoin’s stratospheric rise...

2017 will of course be remembered as Year 1 of a deceitful, authoritarian, racist, misogynous US President. But it is also inspirational for a global women’s uprising, launched in the UK with the London Women’s March in January.The economic surprises of 2017 were the strength of the global cyclical upturn including in the Eurozone (but whose deeper flaws will resurface in the next sharp downturn). Only the UK economy lagged behind – though maybe not as far as many Remainers expected.A...