The Great Re-Think Videos

How the Global Economy works – or doesn’t

In the first of our new series of conversations with radical thinkers and doers Colin Tudge talks to economist Ann Pettifor, director of Policy Research In Macroeconomics (PRIME). Ann is one of the few people in the world who really understands how the global economy works – and it doesn’t work in the interests of humanity or the natural world

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The machinations of the global economy are all but hidden from the public gaze — and it seems from the gaze of most politicians — but it’s the global economy that really determines how we all live. Ann Pettifor describes a system that has no moral base, no worthwhile sense of ecological reality, and is unregulated; serving primarily to make a few individuals immensely rich and so powerful that their whims may override the ambitions and strategies of entire nations. But, she says, economic systems can be transformed rapidly – which indeed has happened twice in recent living memory. The interview is inspired in particular by her latest book – The Green New Deal (Verso 2020). It’s essential reading – not least for Chancellors of the Exchequer. 

We — Ruth and I – are very grateful to Brett Price who filmed and recorded this interview at Ann’s home in Suffolk.

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