Transforming Finance Conference – London, 10th May

On Friday 10th May, the Chartered Accountants’ Hall, Moorgate Place, will host over 27 speakers from across civil society, academia, policy-making, and finance to address these urgent questions:

• How can we get finance flowing into projects with social and environmental value?

• How can we end the injustice of privatised gains and socialised losses from our financial system?

• What can we do about unpayable debts?

Transforming Finance will follow on from the very successful Just Banking conference held in Edinburgh last year. This year Positive Money, along with Friends of the Earth, the New Economics Foundation, the Finance Innovation Lab, ResPublica, Civitas, Fair Pensions, the World Development Movement is a partner in organising the event.

Ben will be speaking on a panel entitled: Fresh thinking on debt and recovery

The mainstream debate about how to end the recession pits austerity against more public and private borrowing. But are these the only options? What about redirecting Quantitative Easing into the real economy, as advocated by Lord Turner? Or a modern day Debt Jubilee? How do we manage debt-cancellation now that there are complicated chains of debt between different players? Could some debts be written off as part of a transition to a new monetary system, one which is based on governments spending money into circulation debt-free, rather than banks lending money into existence as debt?

Other speakers include:

• Thierry Philopponnat, General Secretary of Finance Watch

• Nicola Smith, Head of the TUC’s Economic and Social Affairs Department

• Prof Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey

• Thomas Keidel, Head of Financial Relations at the German Savings Banks Association, DSGV which represents 450 publicly owned regionally headquartered banks

• Victoria Chick, one of the world’s leading scholars of Keynes and monetary economics and Emeritus Professor of Economics, University College London

• Ann Pettifor, whose book The Coming First World Debt Crisis predicted an Anglo-American debt-deflation crisis

• Paul Woolley, co-author of The Future of Finance: The LSE Report, and Founder of the Paul Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality, LSE

• Prof Marianna Mazzucato, economist, author of the The Entrepreneurial State, and Professor of Science and Technology Policy at Sussex University

• Prof Richard Werner, Director of the Centre for Banking, Finance and Sustainable Development, Southampton University whose 2005 book New Paradigm in Macroeconomics correctly predicted the collapse of the UK banking system and property market.

The event is aimed at leaders in civil society, academia, policy-making, finance and journalism. Do book your place soon if you would like to come, as space is running out.