Ann Pettifor is best known for her leadership of Jubilee 2000 – a worldwide campaign to cancel approximately $100 billion of debts owed by 42 of the poorest countries. She was also one of the first to predict the credit crunch in her 2003 book, The Real World Economic Outlook.
Ann Pettifor is Director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics), a network of economists that believe conventional or ‘mainstream’ economic theory has proved of almost no relevance to the ongoing and chronic failure of the global economy and to the gravest threat facing us all: climate change.
Pettifor is an honorary research fellow at City University Political Economy Research Centre, and also a fellow of the new economics foundation and director of Advocacy International Ltd. In 2015 the leader of the British Labour Party named her as one of a council of seven economic advisors and in 2017 Kate Osamor MP appointed her to Labour’s Task Force on international development.
Her books include: Just Money – How Society Can Break the Despotic Power of Finance and The Coming First World Debt Crisis and editor of NEF’s Real World Economic Outlook – The Legacy of Globalisation: Debt and Deflation.
Her latest book, The Production of Money explains the nature of money and the monetary system; tackles thorny issues like Bitcoin and QE, and is written to be accessible to a wide audience. Back in 2003, as editor of The Real World Economic Outlook Palgrave she predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflationary crisis. This was followed by The Coming First World Debt Crisis.
Pettifor’s consultancy undertakes research and advises on international finance and sustainable development. They have worked with numerous NGOs, the Global Fund for Aids, the British, Nigerian, Guyanese, Ethiopian and Norwegian governments, and the Queen of Jordan.
Despite some signs of economic recovery, Ann believes that many Western economies have failed to learn from the 1930s (and Japan in the 90s). She maintains that the lesson of these recessions is the need for a carefully sequenced adjusting of monetary policy, debt management and fiscal policy. Until private output fully returns, there should be still greater public spending.
Ann Pettifor is co-author of the Green New Deal – a set of policies to deal with the threats posed by credit crunch, ‘peak oil’ and climate change. As well as an economic outlook, she also considers the economics of sustainability and desperate need for long-term strategies within businesses and government. Ann Pettifor contributes regularly to the Huffington Post, and is now advising a group of churches on their own climate campaign, Operation Noah.
