Be Angry at Bankers, Be Angrier at Economists

Ann Pettifor, director of Prime: Policy Research in Macroeconomics and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation writes in Guardian, Friday 29th June 2012:

[sws_blockquote align=”” alignment=”” cite=”” quotestyles=”style01″] The Libor scandal ‘is just a symptom of a much bigger dysfunctional banking system, one that is staunchly upheld by the British establishment’ [/sws_blockquote]

Here is a short extract:

While I do of course regard the speculative and often fraudulent activities of our bankers with disdain, I reserve my real anger for the economics profession, both professional and academic.

For it is mainstream, orthodox economics that has effectively given private bankers the cover they need to engage in reckless, greedy, fraudulent and immensely enriching activity. It is orthodox economists who have built the platform on which today stand the young traders at 16 banks involved in the Libor scandal. Above all, it is mainstream economists who are directly responsible for the financial crisis and who have brought our global financial system to this pass.

Yet economists (with some notable exceptions) stand aloof from a crisis of their own making. And when they do deign to engage with it, it is to adopt an attitude of defeatism. We are constantly enjoined to simply accept the destructive fate of austerity, financial failure, bankruptcy and unemployment, for, they argue: “There is nothing to be done.” Only “creative destruction” will do the trick.

But that is a lie. There is much that can be done to alleviate the suffering and destruction of value that we witness daily.

To understand the root of the Barclays scandal, and what must be done now, we – and, most emphatically, orthodox economists – must first understand a foundational element of the economy: money.

The whole article is very much worth reading! READ HERE.