1.
Reigning in Public !
Debts or Challenging Democracies?
Ann Pettifor, PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics)
www.primeeconomics.org
Madariaga College of Europe Foundation
Brussels
1st December, 2011

2.
Private !
Wealth needs Greece
• Greece does not need
private wealth

3.
Why should Greek & EU taxpayers shield private
financial sector from risk?

4.
Struggle between public &
private interests
• Without taxpayer-backed
bailouts (EFSE,ECB,IMF, the US
FED), public guarantees, the
privatisation of assets, private
bankers face armageddon, as in
2008.
• Bankers challenging
democracies - removing elected
politicians

5.
Imposing 'technocrats'
Denying the people Voice

6.
Total exposure of British private banks to
Italian/Belgian/Greek public debt = $20bn (Bank for
International Settlements, June, 2011)

7.
Belgian private bank exposure to public debt of It/
Gr/Ire = $19.47bn. (BIS June, 2011)

8.
French private bank exposure to Italian/Greek/Irish
public debt = $106bn (BIS, June, 2011)

9.
Austerity marks final failure of
existing arrangements between Financial liberalisation has failed
private & public interests

10.
Next Steps
• Euro must be abandoned
• Not a currency of the peoples, but an ideal of private
wealth
• Euro a perversion of greatest monies in history - which
arose as a relation between people and the state
• Through development of central banks, domestic banks,
state borrowing, paper currency, double-entry book-
keeping and taxation, national monies have underpinned
greatest societies in the world.

11.
But Euro aimed at !
interests of private!
wealth
• Divorced from nation states
• Statutes explicitly prohibit the
support of state activity
• Through "swaps" "QE" etc.
• Its foundation in monetarist
doctrine inhibits private
economic activity, has led to
financial monopolies
• Rather than encouraging
convergence across EU,
intensifies divergences

12.
In 1931 Britain threw off
the "fetters" of Gold
• Then as now the "Lords of
Finance" demanded Austerity,
and the impact of the Crash &
Great Depression hammered the
innocent.
• The UK, led by Keynes, threw off
the equivalent of the Euro, and
restrained the bankers -
subordinating their interests to
the broader interests of society
• Sterling was revived and
protected from speculation

13.
1934 Roosevelt freed
the dollar
• Embarked on finest programme
of public works expenditure in
modern history
• Great public buildings erected,
symphony orchestras
established, writers - like John
Steinbeck - sponsored, murals
created, swimming pools built.
• In 1935 Socialist government in
France did the same.
• Only the Fascist governments
remained in thrall to Gold, and to
private wealth