BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:St Catharine's Political Economy Seminar Series - Speaker:Ann Pett
 ifor - Ann Pettifor
DTSTART:20160203T180000Z
DTEND:20160203T193000Z
UID:TALK63287@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Philippa Millerchip
DESCRIPTION:Talk Title: ‘Challenging the Ideology of Austerity’\n\nSpe
 aker\nAnn Pettifor is a director of the think-tank Policy research in Macr
 oeconomics (PRIME).  In September 2015 she was appointed as a member of Je
 remy Corbyn’s Labour Economic Advisory Committee\, along with Mariana Ma
 zzucato\, Joseph Stiglitz\, Thomas Piketty\, Anastasia Nesvetailova and Da
 nny Blanchflower. Her background is in sovereign debt – particularly tho
 se of low-income countries. More recently she has analysed\, and written e
 xtensively on both the private and public debts of Anglo-American economie
 s. She was one of the leaders of the Jubilee 2000 campaign\, which led to 
 the writing off of $100 billion (in nominal terms) of debt owed by 35 of t
 he poorest countries in Africa\, Latin America and Asia. In 2005 she helpe
 d the Nigerian Debt Management Office clear $30bn of debt owed to the Pari
 s Club of creditors. Ann Pettifor was one of the few people to correctly p
 redict (in 2003 and 2006) the global debt-deflationary crisis of 2007. She
  is an honorary research fellow at City Political Economy Research Centre\
 , City University London: and is Chair of the Advisory Board at Goldsmiths
  College’s Political Economy Research Centre\, London. She has an honora
 ry doctorate from the University of Newcastle and is a senior fellow of th
 e New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London. She is the author of Just Mone
 y – How Society Can Break the Despotic Power of Finance (Commonwealth Pu
 blishing 2014) and The Coming First World Debt (Palgrave Macmillan\, 2006)
  and was the editor of NEF’s Real World Economic Outlook – The Legacy 
 of Globalisation: Debt and Deflation (Palgrave Macmillan\, 2003). She co-a
 uthored the Green New Deal Group’s transformational economic programme T
 he Green New deal (2008) and The Cuts Won’t Work (2009) and\, with Profe
 ssor Victoria Chick\, she co-authored PRIME’s radical analysis of 100 ye
 ars of UK public debt and its impact\, The Economic Consequences of Mr Osb
 orn (2011).\n\nTalk Overview:\nAnn Pettifor will discuss the one-sided and
  one-dimensional aspects of today's dominant economic narrative. It acts a
 s cover for an ideological objective: a world of liberal finance freed up 
 by de-regulation and capital mobility to exercise despotic power over an i
 lliberal and shrunken state. Mainstream members of the economics professio
 n have wittingly or unwittingly colluded with the dominant narrative\, whi
 ch derives from the work of classical and neo-classical economists. Most h
 ave a flawed understanding of the nature of credit and money. To subordina
 te finance to the wider interests of society\, and to restore stability\, 
 full employment and sustainability to the global economy\, John Maynard Ke
 ynes’s domestic and international monetary reforms must be revived – e
 specially in Cambridge. Above all\, today’s ‘Keynesian economics’ mu
 st be discredited\, as a gross misrepresentation of Keynes’s economic th
 eory. There is another reason for reviving Keynes’s opposition to libera
 l finance: climate change. In his essay on national self-sufficiency he ma
 de plain the need for a gradual move towards national self-sufficiency\, a
 nd towards the recognition that under today’s dominant economic model\, 
 “We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated spl
 endors of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off th
 e sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend.” The link betwee
 n unfettered finance\, credit and excessive consumption must be broken\, A
 nn Pettifor will argue\, if we are to build a sustainable economy – for 
 both ours\, and our grandchildren’s generation.\n\nAll are welcome to at
 tend.\nThe seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economi
 cs and the Economics and Policy Group at the Judge Business School.\n\nPle
 ase contact the seminar organisers Philip Arestis (pa267@cam.ac.uk) and Mi
 chael Kitson (m.kitson@jbs.cam.ac.uk) in the event of a query.
LOCATION:The Ramsden Room\, St Catharine's College
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR