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The Coming First World Debt Crisis

The Coming First World Debt Crisis
By Ann Pettifor

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Product Description

In this book Ann Pettifor examines the issues of debt affecting the first world or OECD countries. She traces the history and roots of where the current international debt crisis comes from--economic liberalization--and the restructuring of the international financial architecture in the early 1970s. The book goes on to explore the implications of high international indebtedness for governments, corporations, households and individuals. An important and unique contribution is Pettifor's discussion of the justice and morality of debt.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #758359 in Books
  • Published on: 2006-11-28
  • Released on: 2006-11-28
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 232 pages

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ANN PETTIFOR was the co-founder of Jubilee 2000 which campaigned for debt relief at the turn of the millennium and is now a Director of Advocacy International, which works with debtor governments, and has helped countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia and Guyana write off millions of dollars of debt.

Customer Reviews

Useful insights4
I read the book before I read the reviews here. After I read the book, I thought to myself that the author had some interesting ideas. Not many people before 2007 thought so negatively about bankers : before the crisis, bankers were well-respected people who were regarded as upright, intelligent and deservedly rich. Young graduates rushed to join banks not only for the money but the prestige. Now we know how wrong we all were. The banks abused the privilege (of being able to create money from thin air) given to them, chased short-term profits that resulted in the collapse of the system, dragging down innocent people with them. If anything, the book should have served as a warning to policy makers before 2007 that bankers should be reined in. I disagree with the other reader who called the author Marxist and other names. The facts support her views. Banks serve an important function in a capitalist society, but they have to be kept under a leash, otherwise they will do damage to the society. Credit creation is a two-way sword, we need it for economic growth, but if it is given too loosely, it will destroy the system. This is not Marxist speak, this is pragmatism.

Astounding Greed3
Generally good, but superseded by better books. I wouldn't go as far as giving it just one star as another reviewer had given it. The author rightfully alludes to bankers as usurers. They and their plutocratic masters (of the likes of the Rothschilds) have, in their astounding greed, put most of us in debt slavery and meagre pensions because governments won't create our debt-free money for us.

ANN PETTIFOR would have done best to have campaigned firstly for 1st world debt, because the already debt-enslaved people and the poorest people in the 1st world ended up paying for most of the $110bn of debt cancelled by the G8 leaders in 1999 (for which she and her ilk had campaigned successfully). The cancelled debt simply gets surreptitiously recouped through taxes in the 1st world. In fact, her and her ilk's bleeding-hearts campaigning for 3rd world country debt-relief has put her et al in moral and financial debt to the already debt-enslaved people and the poorest people in the 1st world because of this.

She has simply been making money out this book without doing anything as constructive as what is recommended in the book "Web of Debt" (ISBN: 0979560829). In Britain, the Money Reform Party and others are doing what she should have done. She and her ilk should have, and should still have signed up with, and taken action for the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (www.simpol.org) that would encourage international agreement to comply with ethical governance and trade.

Marxist diatribe against bankers1
I bought this book after seeing Pettifor on TV, being credited for predicting the current (2007-onward) credit crises. I guess it serves me right that I did not research who the author was. I thought the book was going to be about economics, or that it would throw some light on the nature and extent of the current crisis. Instead, it is a diatribe from someone who seems to be Marxist-Christian-ecologist.

I did find it interesting that modern Marxists are now speaking with praise of certain classes of businessmen, and even extolling their profit-making. However, this praise is reserved only for those who make "real" things. It is a vague term that is an expansion of the Marxist theory of value, updated to include knowledge work...except financial intermediation.

The book is a rant about modern "usury". I made it into about 30 pages but was falling asleep. So, I've listed my copy on Amazon. I'm writing this review because I don't want anyone buying it with the wrong impression.

The book would be a valuable addition to any college student preparing a paper where he would like to argue about the evils of "globalization", how bankers are usurers who are driving us to exhaust the planets resources, or how the gold standard was like a corset. For everyone else, it's pretty much useless.