Ann Pettifor

One voice that seems to be getting a lot of airtime in left-wing British press on the "credit crisis" is that of Ann Pettifor of Advocacy International. She also has a blog.

Her analysis is interesting, even if her solutions are a little extreme. Cancelling debt would mean cancelling the population's bank accounts at the same time. This would be politically unfeasible.

But her "credit pump" theory, I think is astute. Essentially, because credit has been easy asset prices have become inflated and thus people have been forced to borrow beyond their means in order to get by. To be honest, I think even those people who haven't borrowed extensively, have still probably derived a good part of their income indirectly from the credit-fuelled consumption. In other words, our economy has become "addicted to credit" to use a trope, which has in turn widened disparities wealth.

I don't think that so extreme a Jubilee as she advocates is going to be the answer. But it is wrong to talk of systematic at risk at this stage. The system was self-destructive from the outset. As we dig our way out of the hole, we do need to be thinking about what a better system would look like so we can dig in the right direction.