The debate about the banks' power to create money is becoming much more mainstream. After the recent event, Does Money Grow on Trees?, parliament is scheduled to debate the issue for the first time in 170 years.
In this exclusive extract from Just Money: How Society Can Break the Despotic Power of Finance Ann Pettifor describes how orthodox economics and finance have promoted a profoundly inadequate account of money. Change is necessary and possible. But it will come only through a revolution in the gener
Finance has cast a spell on the framework for international economic co-operation established after the Second World War. The 2007-8 crisis and its aftermath highlight the need to rouse the IMF and the World Bank from their slumbers.
Persistent trade imbalances are threatening to derail the European economy. Luca Fantacci calls for a European Clearing Union to promote a sustainable pattern of production and consumption across the Eurozone.
“Financial repression” always casts state regulators as authoritarian villains and allows apologists for uncontrolled finance to pose as freedom fighters. Maybe we should worry far less about efforts to “repress” finance and far more about finance’s efforts to oppress the rest of us.
The growth of finance over the last forty years has changed capitalism profoundly. It is time for its critics to grasp the nature and significance of these changes. Only then will the supremacy of finance face an effective challenge.
The shadow banking sector is now integral to the global financial system. Its architects are constantly seeking to evade oversight and control through the use of offshore accounting and forbidding complexity. The regulatory reforms that followed the 2007-8 crisis are bound to be tested.
The debate between these two economists on the role of banking and specifically the creation of credit is of fundamental importance in understanding the shortcomings of orthodox economic thinking - and why it was so ill-equipped to handle, let alone predict, the crash of 2008.
