Monday, July 1, 2013

Mehdi Hasan, Adair Turner, Jon Moulton, Costas Lapavitsas, and Ann Pettifor — Has Capitalism Failed the World?

...Mehdi Hasan challenges former top financial regulator Lord Adair Turner on the role of the banks, the politics behind austerity and whether capitalism has failed....

Joining our discussion are: Jon Moulton, a venture capitalist and the founder of the private equity firm Better Capital. He has nurtured a reputation for forthrightness even to point of challenging his private equity peers for abusing tax regimes. He is also one of the few men in the City of London who warned about the impending crash before it happened; Professor Costas Lapavitsas, who teaches economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and is the author of several notable books on the crash and its consequences including Crisis in the Eurozone and Financialisation in Crisis; and Ann Pettifor, the director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics), and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation. She was one of the first to warn about the debt crisis in her book The Coming First World Debt Crisis, and is also well-known for her leadership of the successful worldwide campaign to cancel developing world debt - Jubilee 2000.
Al Jazeera | Head to Head
Has capitalism failed the world?
Discussion with Mehdi Hasan, Adair Turner, Jon Moulton, Costas Lapavitsas, and Ann Pettifor



5 comments:

Carlos said...

Enjoyed the discussion. Adair Turner obviously the most dangerous man in the room. Intelligent, plausible, pursuasive but morally corrupt. As if a less leveraged version of the same system will be anything but less bad.

Clearly understands the problem and the range of solutions available... Absolutely determined to maintain the existing system and power structures. Providing the deception and delaying tactics to ensure nothing ever gets done.

The plan always was to delay until everyone forgets. My unapolgetic banker "friend" told me with glee back in 08. Everyone will forget in 2 years and we are back to the races. Well it's taking longer than that.

You can see Adair smirk when he talks about forgetting previous credit bubbles and the creation of the next bubble. These goof offs really expect us to be forgetting Lehman Bros sometime fairly soon.

The jerk knows fiscal stimulus works and is the solution. he must comprehend MMT and the deficit bullshit. He is so so scared to open the door a crack for the socialists and alternative power structures.

Tom Hickey said...

Yep.

Ignacio said...

Haven't watch this, but Andrew, did you watch INET speech from Turner?

He is clearly apologetic of increasing public spending through 'monetary financing'. However always kept the 'cautious tone' of VSP, supposedly talking to TPTB.


What will come out of this whole situation no one knows, but is certainly a dangerous situation. A lot of people does not want the current power structure to change, but at the same time an unsustainable situation will have to be solved. Dangerous times indeed.

Carlos said...

Methinks Soros and the gang at INET fully understand the tenets of MMT.....I'm cynical, I expect them to come up with some gobledegook that discredits increases in Government spending while proposing tax cuts for the rich and helicopter money for business. The JG will be pure anathema to them. Like the good establishment neoliberals they probably are.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Andrew

Yes, this is debate within Post Keynesianism among Chartalists (MMT) and Circuitists (MCT or TCM) with some MCT folks arguing against the Chratalist ELR position.

See Marc Lavoie's "friendly critique" of MMT here, updated Mar 2013 (h/t JKH for the link), Thomas Palley, MMT/ELR: A Mix of Old and Unsubstantiated New Ideas, and criticisms at MR based on Brett Fiebiger's analysis of MMT claims, Fiebiger being one of the MCT cohort that disagrees with the MMT cohort and its MCT allies.

Politically I see it as a right-left issue one one hand, i.e, those who wish to combine fiscal and monetary policy, and a disagreement among some on the left about differences over preferred fiscal policy, on the other.