What is money, where does it come from, and who controls it?
These are the questions answered in the new book from my guest on the podcast today, leading political economist Ann Pettifor.
Ann is a UK-based economist, director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), an honorary research fellow at the Political Economy Research Centre at City University, London and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation.
She is also executive director of the consultancy Advocacy International, which advises governments and organisations on international finance and sustainable development.
Ann is best known for correctly predicting the Global Financial Crises in several publications including “Coming soon: The new poor”and her 2006 publication “The coming first world debt crisis”.
Pettifor’s background is in sovereign debt. She was one of the leaders in the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, which succeeded in writing off $100 billion of debts (in nominal terms) owed by 35 of the poorest countries.
Her new book is The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Bankers. In this book, Ann argues that democracies can reclaim control over money production and subordinate the out-of-control finance sector to the interests of society, and also the ecosystem.
In this episode of Informed Choice Radio, I speak to Ann about what money really is, the fundamental issues with the money system, what happens if nothing changes, whether we can still trust economists, if women are better positioned than men to control the money system, and the rise in the popularity of gold bugs.
Welcome to The Production of Money with Ann Pettifor, in episode 177 of Informed Choice Radio.
Click here to get the full episode transcript
Some questions I ask:
-What is money really?
-Are there any fundamental issues with the current money system?
-What happens if nothing changes?
-How can we use the money system to meet the real needs of society?
-Can we still trust economists?
-Are women better positioned than men to reclaim control over the production of money?
-What’s behind the rise in gold’s popularity and the presence of goldbugs?
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
–Prime Economics
–The Production of Money by Ann Pettifor
–Ann on Twitter
Thank you for listening!
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Click here to get the full episode transcript | 
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