0:02

It was 15 years ago this autumn

0:04

that investment bank Lehman Brothers filed

0:07

for bankruptcy, kicking off a catastrophic

0:10

chain of events that would lead to the Great Recession,

0:13

austerity and the European debt

0:15

crisis.

0:16

But two years earlier, economist

0:18

Anne Pettifor had warned of an incoming

0:20

detonation in her book The Coming

0:23

First World Debt Crisis

0:25

and called for a political strategy to lower

0:27

household debt in the global north. But

0:30

her warnings went unheeded.

0:33

Anne's in the middle of an illustrious career. She

0:36

co-founded the successful Jubilee 2000

0:39

debt campaign where $100 billion of third world

0:43

debt was cancelled by world leaders.

0:45

She went on, she was part of a small

0:48

group of economists and environmentalists who

0:50

in 2008 authored the

0:52

Green New Deal to make the

0:54

financial system the servant of

0:56

society prosecuting green

0:59

objectives.

1:00

It's a program that's been backed by Al Gore, Nobel

1:02

laureates in economics and dozens of politicians

1:04

around the world.

1:06

Of course, there have been critics, Donald Trump

1:08

being the most high profile. But

1:11

in a world where we've normalized the richest 1%

1:13

of the world, accounting for over 15% of

1:16

cumulative emissions, will

1:18

Anne's warnings go unheeded again? Well,

1:21

welcome to the Wee Society, Anne. It's

1:23

a great pleasure to have you here.

1:24

Thank you, Will. It's good to be here. We're

1:28

going to plunge into the heartland

1:30

of your work in a moment or two. But let's hear a bit

1:32

just a little bit about you, the woman.

1:35

You grew up in apartheid South Africa. Yes,

1:37

I grew up in a very small gold

1:39

mining town in what could

1:41

be described as the outback of South Africa,

1:43

the Orange Free State. And my

1:46

parents went there after the war because South

1:48

Africa was pretty, had

1:51

been knackered by the 1930s depression

1:54

and there was no work. And my dad

1:57

found work in the

1:59

free state because they discovered gold there in

2:01

1945-46, Anglo-American that is, and there was gold

2:07

rush and he was part of it. Anyway so I

2:09

grew up in this really at

2:12

the time quite remote

2:13

and still quite remote place. So you were

2:15

a child of a gold rush. Yeah,

2:18

in my little town, my town lived

2:21

in a place called Windallthriss and then I moved

2:23

to a place called Valkom and it had

2:25

a reputation for having the highest birth rate

2:27

in the country, the highest death rate and highest

2:30

alcohol consumption rate. So it was

2:32

really a rough old place,

2:33

one of you know, gold

2:35

rush types. Now how did you get from

2:38

there to here and

2:40

where did interest in

2:42

international finance come from? Actually,

2:45

you know, when I thought about it, I think the seeds

2:47

were so there because, and

2:49

I, you know, I was

2:50

quite young when we first

2:51

went there but I was 18 when I left

2:54

and while I was growing up, of course,

2:56

we were digging gold out of in Valkom

2:58

and when I say we,

2:59

I mean mainly black miners owned

3:01

by Anglo-American and the gold

3:03

price never changed once through all

3:06

that period, of course, because until 1973

3:08

and that was

3:11

because of course the deal that had been made in

3:14

the 1930s by Roosevelt to fix

3:17

the price of $33

3:17

an ounce

3:19

and I remember visibly

3:23

my dad taking me into school and I would sit

3:25

in the back of the car and lean over and ask

3:27

him questions about he was, he'd not

3:29

been to, he'd not finished school if I'm going

3:31

to university but, you know, I'd say to him, now

3:33

why, why does the price of gold not change

3:36

but all the other prices are changing and

3:38

he tried to talk to me about something called the Bretton

3:41

Woods system or about, because

3:43

he read the newspapers and he knew a

3:45

fair amount about that and I

3:47

had no idea what he was talking about but I was

3:49

aware of this huge contradiction

3:51

between this fantastic

3:54

asset that was being excavated in

3:56

our town and these great mounds

3:58

of rocks that were growing. all around

4:00

the town as the gold was pulled

4:02

out, but that the price stayed fixed

4:05

for all that period. And then suddenly

4:07

in 1973, it was liberalized,

4:09

if you like, and the gold price went through the roof. And

4:12

by that time, I had left home. But

4:15

then what happened was people started sifting

4:17

through the rock to get the tiny

4:19

bits of gold that people had not bothered about

4:22

before in order to blast.

4:24

So, yeah, so I think that...

4:26

So, why

4:26

were you in 1973 when the Bretton Woods system

4:28

collapsed? I mean, where were you physically and what were you

4:31

doing intellectually? I mean, there's

4:33

the Ann Pettifer, Green

4:36

New Dealer, June 3, 2000 campaigner.

4:40

How did you come to be that person?

4:41

Well, first of all, by that term, I was in

4:44

Britain. I had got involved in student

4:46

politics at university, but I kind of... And

4:50

I got into trouble. And I had the sense

4:52

that if I wasn't careful, I was going to end

4:54

up in Robben Island, on Robben Island. And

4:57

honestly, I was too cowardly to

4:59

do that. And I thought, no, I want to get out. By

5:01

that time,

5:01

I'd become incredibly disillusioned

5:04

with South Africa. And my university

5:06

education... Because of apartheid? Because of apartheid,

5:08

because I knew black... I

5:11

mean, I belonged to the only mixed race organization

5:13

on campus, which was the Anglican

5:16

Students' Federation. The National Union of Students

5:18

had been banned. There was no other

5:20

place you could meet black people. And

5:22

of course, it was a bit of a shock to me because

5:24

I've grown up in the more white community.

5:27

But when the shock registered,

5:29

I just... I

5:31

remember feeling this was so utterly

5:33

outrageous

5:33

and against everything I'd been taught from the

5:36

Bible and so on. Anyway,

5:38

I wanted to leave. And so I got involved in

5:40

student demonstrations and

5:42

so on. But I then said

5:44

to my parents, I wanted out really. And

5:46

I wanted to go to Britain because

5:48

I'd read English novels and so on. And

5:51

I

5:51

had... I loved to go there. And I did. I

5:53

raised some money. I worked hard and I paid

5:56

for the flights and I came over here.

5:59

I also had a boy.

5:59

boyfriend here. So, I was here at the

6:02

time. So what I always had was this background

6:04

in Africa.

6:12

Africa was where my roots are.

6:14

And then I

6:16

spent time in Tanzania. What happened

6:18

was

6:18

I wanted to go back to Africa. So you've lived, you've

6:21

kind of seen, I guess, you've seen the, I'm

6:23

going to call it kind of unfairness

6:26

of the relationship between a less

6:29

developed, the

6:30

less developed global south and

6:32

the developed global north. I mean, you've kind of

6:34

lived in it. It's deep in my bones,

6:37

really, you know, because I came

6:39

to Britain, thought, no, this is not

6:41

right. I must go back to Africa, but I didn't want

6:43

to go back to South Africa. So when

6:45

I went back to Tanzania and we were there

6:48

when Julius Nereiwe was still president. And

6:50

that had a huge impact on my psyche,

6:52

as you can imagine, with the end of the Vietnam war and

6:55

seeing the Vietnam war through the lens

6:57

of a small, poor country in Africa

6:59

was fascinating. It just changed

7:02

everything that I, all my

7:04

thinking, really. Let's talk about debt. Let's talk

7:06

about, let's get going. And we'll

7:08

start off with the Jubilee 2000 campaign. I

7:11

mean, that was, what

7:14

roused you? And what do you

7:16

think was the trigger moment that led to the kind

7:19

of

7:19

debt alleviation program? Well,

7:22

I was, I was following the

7:24

debt crisis and reading books about it

7:26

at that

7:27

stage, you know, and, um, we

7:29

actually, we probably should start off to the initiative

7:31

by actually saying what it was.

7:33

So this is the sovereign debt crisis that

7:36

had, if you like, emerged on the margins

7:39

of the global economy in countries

7:41

like African countries, but also Latin American

7:44

countries and so on. And it had arisen

7:46

many argued as a result of the

7:49

oil crisis of the early 1970s,

7:51

when actually, you know, there were too

7:54

many dollars being earned in the North. And

7:56

a lot of those were dumped in the South to avoid

7:58

inflation.

7:59

That's the traditional argument. And

8:02

so, money, easy money was lent on to

8:05

all kinds of governments in the

8:07

South.

8:08

And

8:09

the argument is that was part of the process. There's

8:11

been a succession of crises before this. There had been, I mean,

8:13

there's been a number of countries that have gotten the system

8:15

to trouble. Argentina, I remember, Latin

8:17

American debt crisis. And actually, nobody

8:20

kind of blew the whistle, and the system

8:22

would carry on. And ultimately,

8:25

you had a whole bunch of countries

8:28

having insupportable levels of dollar debt.

8:31

Well, the history of Brazil and the history of Argentina

8:33

is the history of debt, essentially. And,

8:36

you know, they borrowed money to build the railroads

8:38

and so on. And they borrowed money then

8:40

from the city of London. And

8:43

so, yes, they have been rolling sovereign debt

8:45

crises over decades, over centuries. Well,

8:48

let's start with a debt crisis in 2000. Yeah. And

8:51

it's a jubilee campaign, which you were really

8:53

in the middle of, to persuade

8:55

the West to write off debts

8:57

to large parts of the global

9:00

South, Africa, Latin

9:02

America. Why

9:04

that moment?

9:05

I think, you know, the sovereign

9:08

debt crisis for poor countries had been building

9:11

in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. And

9:13

by the 90s, it was pretty serious. They

9:15

were, if you like, diverting more of their

9:17

resources to repaying debt to rich creditors

9:20

than they were towards their own

9:22

economies. And we became aware

9:24

of this. We became aware that actually – and, you

9:27

know, they had to pay in US dollars. You

9:29

can't repay your – if you're in Zambia

9:32

or Tanzania or South Africa or Nigeria,

9:34

you can't repay in your own currency. I've got to find the greenback.

9:37

Which means you've got to earn dollars,

9:39

which means you've got to orient your economy towards

9:42

exports and so on. And this

9:44

was basically, you

9:46

know, damaging, naturally draining

9:48

this. And we argue it wasn't sustainable.

9:51

And rich countries didn't have to, if you like,

9:53

milk poor countries of those debt repayments.

9:56

And indeed, the IMF made sure that they were

9:58

always replenished with new money. And when we

10:00

argued with the IMF about this, they said, well,

10:03

don't worry, we just give them more loans. We'll

10:05

just offer them more loans with which to repay

10:07

or fold loans so that we keep the creditors

10:09

happy, essentially. And we argued

10:12

this is really not sustainable. And

10:14

but there's no international framework

10:17

for the resolution of debt crises in

10:19

the same way as there is at a domestic

10:21

level. We have bankruptcy law, insolvency

10:24

laws at home. And

10:26

this prevents creditors, if you like, from

10:29

putting debtors in jail or grabbing

10:32

all of their assets and so on. There is no

10:34

such framework

10:35

in the international sphere. It's

10:37

a very unbalanced, unfair framework.

10:40

The creditors are dominant. And

10:42

they call the shots. And basically

10:45

what we said was we've had enough of this.

10:47

And our government, the British government, shouldn't do that.

10:49

And then we aligned with others in the West

10:52

and built this jubilee 2000 global

10:55

movement and pressured our governments to

10:57

say you don't need to keep

11:00

bleeding these countries with money which they

11:02

can't afford and you surely can afford to

11:05

lose.

11:05

And it was a hell of a fight.

11:08

But in the end, we persuaded Gordon

11:10

Brown, Tony Blair and Clinton,

11:13

I mean, only after the

11:15

Pope had put enormous pressure on them all,

11:18

to write off for the poorest countries. Now,

11:20

they didn't write at all off, but

11:22

they wrote off a substantial amount, $100 billion

11:26

in nominal terms for about 30

11:28

countries. And that

11:30

might, that is enough actually peanuts

11:32

in the global economy, but it meant a lot there.

11:35

At the time, we thought, fantastic.

11:39

And it was fantastic.

11:41

But here we are 20 years on. And

11:44

actually, the

11:46

problems continue. And Africa is

11:49

more populous and you worry

11:51

about how the 21st century is going to unfold.

11:53

Sure. So we began with a simple

11:55

demand, Kelsella debt by

11:57

the year 2000. That was our demand.

12:00

very attractive and attracted an awful

12:02

lot of support. But as the campaign

12:04

progressed, it became very clear to me that it's

12:07

no good writing off the debt if you don't change

12:09

the system, if you don't somehow change

12:12

the structural imbalance between

12:15

rich country creditors and poor country

12:17

debtors.

12:20

I just want to take a moment to talk to you very briefly

12:22

about the organization behind the WE Society.

12:26

The Academy of Social Sciences is a national

12:28

body for academics, practitioners and

12:31

learned societies in the social sciences.

12:34

As the president of the Academy, I can tell you that we

12:36

champion the vital role social sciences

12:38

play in education, in government, in business,

12:41

the list goes on. You can find out

12:43

more about the Academy of Social Sciences work,

12:45

support us, or read up on our fellows

12:48

by going to the website acss.org.uk.

12:52

That's accss.org.uk.

12:56

Tell us what we should be covering, who we should

12:58

be speaking to by emailing wesociety

13:02

at accss.org.uk.

13:06

Now, back to the conversation.

13:15

There were fears only 10 years ago

13:17

that global temperatures would rise by four and a half degrees

13:20

by the end of this.

13:20

Now it looks as though the figure is going to be,

13:23

it's still too high.

13:24

But it's going

13:26

to be hopefully lower than 2.5. That's

13:29

a big deal to achieve that. I mean. Yeah,

13:32

I'm worried about if it hits 1.5. Yeah,

13:35

I know, I know, I know. But I mean,

13:37

countries around the world are taking it seriously.

13:40

And there's a movement to kind

13:43

of decarbonization, which is taking,

13:45

getting accelerating and growth

13:48

of renewable energy. And you yourself, I

13:50

mean, one of the one of the group that got

13:52

the Green New Deal off the ground.

13:54

Yes. You

13:56

must be quite pleased. To be honest, I'm

13:58

a huge, I am a.

13:59

By nature, I'm an optimist and

14:02

I believe we can do something

14:03

about this.

14:05

But I think also there's a great deal

14:07

of ignorance and a great deal of obfuscation

14:09

around the economy

14:11

and I don't think it's accidental.

14:14

And plus there's some pretty bad economics

14:16

out there. One of our problems, no,

14:18

I won't go into the economics

14:21

profession that keep us going for a long time.

14:23

Because you're not a professional economist, no? No, I'm not and I have no

14:25

pretense. I am a professional economist, I'm not

14:27

an academic economist.

14:28

And I have no pretensions to be so.

14:30

I

14:33

mean my work has arisen

14:36

out of my experience, out of my lived experience,

14:38

especially working on sovereign debt. I

14:40

mean it's a very privileged position to be working

14:43

on that because I worked with some very

14:45

effective and wonderful economists at the IMF

14:48

and the World Bank. I spent

14:51

those five years really deep in the

14:53

whole area. Who's paying you? Where did the salary

14:55

come from? Well, I was, Jubilee 2000

14:58

was set up in the one hand by a very

15:00

wealthy man and backed by all

15:02

the big

15:03

NGOs, Oxfam, Fitchinade and so

15:05

on.

15:05

And they employed me. They put an advertisement

15:08

to the Economist and asked if, you

15:10

know. And you wanted to do a haystack show? I asked for it. Yeah,

15:13

you are. Sitting in the We

15:15

Society studio 20 years later. Yes. Do

15:17

you think that there's

15:18

enough momentum behind a

15:21

kind of environmental and green concerns? I mean

15:23

the fear is that there's

15:26

a certain amount of

15:27

green fatigue. Yes. And

15:29

that people will

15:30

make so many sacrifices but no more.

15:34

And that actually some of the support and momentum for this

15:36

may be fading. Yes.

15:38

I mean I think people are still a little

15:42

complacent and we in Britain are particularly

15:44

complacent. We've been protected this summer

15:46

by the jet stream. If we'd been

15:49

in Spain or in parts of Europe, you

15:51

know, and had a crop or had

15:54

a business that relied

15:56

on water and so on, we

15:59

would be feeling...

15:59

differently in Libya.

16:02

Now, Libya,

16:04

I was thinking how interesting it

16:06

was. It wasn't climate change

16:08

that caused 10,000 people to die. It

16:11

was the fact that there were two dams

16:12

on their big river that

16:15

had not been maintained or looked after that

16:19

burst and flooded the nearby

16:21

towns. And of course, the rain

16:24

and the heavy rain and so on played a part. But

16:26

the really big

16:27

part was the infrastructure and

16:30

the fact that of course, because of all

16:33

sorts of reasons, that country has not

16:35

had a government. But above all, that

16:38

dams, which are fundamental to

16:41

stability and resilience, we

16:44

are allowed to weaken. And so we end

16:46

this

16:46

crisis. One, two dams burst

16:48

and 10,000 people die.

16:50

So, no, what it's taught us

16:52

is that, I mean, I think it's about 10,000 people

16:55

are estimating 10,000.

16:57

That actually we need to invest in

17:00

the infrastructure that we need and Africa

17:02

needs to invest

17:03

in infrastructure that it needs

17:05

to survive these coming threats.

17:07

And they are very real threats. They're

17:09

not coming, they're there already. You

17:12

know, people are already impacted

17:14

very seriously by climate breakdown.

17:17

And I think we're a little bit complacent

17:19

here because we think we've got time. I'm

17:21

not at all sure that we have all that time. Where

17:24

would you start? We must bring this through because I

17:26

just wanted to kind of, but where would you start? I mean,

17:29

you want to go to Bretton Woods 2, is that the idea?

17:32

I mean, Bretton Woods 2, a Jubilee 2000,

17:35

now we might call it

17:37

Jubilee 2030 or something. Really, you

17:41

know, push for the Green New Deal 2. I mean, these

17:43

three areas is where you might move. I'm just trying

17:45

to pull your thoughts together. And where

17:48

can listeners to this, who want to follow

17:51

up or kind of play a part in

17:53

change? What

17:54

can they best do? Well, I think the first thing

17:56

we have to remind ourselves is that just a

17:58

few years ago, it was a two, three, years ago

18:00

with effectively nationalized

18:03

capitalism. We nationalized

18:05

the economy because of COVID.

18:09

What was extraordinary about COVID,

18:10

and like

18:12

you, I was here, I watched

18:14

as people obediently stayed at home,

18:17

obediently gave up all kinds of things,

18:19

obediently did not go and visit

18:22

their parents in hospitals and so on.

18:24

They did that without any real enforcement.

18:26

There was a huge transformation

18:29

took place and people willingly

18:31

and understandably said, we've

18:34

got to do this because of

18:36

the crisis. So we are capable

18:38

of reacting

18:39

very quickly and making

18:41

big changes overnight. And

18:43

our government

18:44

even turned out to be capable

18:46

of doing that. Now, it was

18:49

hugely costly for many people,

18:52

but nevertheless what it shows me is that actually

18:54

we can very quickly

18:56

bring about a transformation. And in

18:58

this case, it was forced on us, but

19:00

I would hope that we can do it willingly. So, I would

19:03

say, yes, we have

19:05

to transform our system as it is at the moment.

19:07

That's the theme of my substat system

19:10

change. We have to change the system and

19:12

we can do that. Okay. This

19:15

is a rounder at the last couple of minutes.

19:18

I'm sure you're right. I'm sure that

19:21

there is the possibility people

19:24

behaving collectively in their own interests.

19:26

But actually what

19:28

concretely do you want them

19:30

to rally around? What is your agenda

19:33

for action? What do you want? Elevate

19:35

a pitch, one, two, three. The first thing I want

19:37

to say is that we invented money

19:40

in order as Keynes argues for us

19:42

to be able to do what we can do. We

19:44

can do this. Money was

19:47

always something that would make that possible,

19:49

would make it accessible. But

19:52

our money system has been captured. It's

19:55

no longer there for us to use. It's therefore

19:58

actually just a minority to use.

19:59

So number one, the first thing

20:02

I would do

20:02

would say I want to subordinate, we

20:04

must subordinate the finance sector

20:07

to the interests of society and that requires

20:09

regulation. And there are very quick

20:11

ways we can do that. We can set terms and

20:13

conditions for the use of all our public

20:15

services, the Bank of England, our

20:19

criminal justice system for where the

20:21

finance sector enforces its contracts

20:24

and so on and so forth. The government

20:26

bonds that we issue which they use as collateral

20:28

in the shadow banking system. These are all

20:30

things we can say, you're very welcome to

20:32

use these public resources, but

20:35

these are the terms and conditions. We could do

20:37

that tomorrow. Okay, that's the first thing.

20:39

The second thing is? The second thing

20:41

is we have to understand that the climate crisis

20:43

is so real and I've got

20:46

grandchildren. We can't mess around

20:48

with that. We have to change our habits. We have

20:50

to give up our fossil fuels. And

20:52

I'm so proud of being part of the Scottish Government's

20:55

Just Transition Commission. And

20:58

my experience of being on that commission is

21:00

to understand how hard it is, how hard it

21:02

is for Scottish oil rig workers to

21:04

give up what they're doing. The Scottish Just

21:07

Transition Commission is? It's its commission

21:09

for preparing for a transition

21:11

to a greener economy,

21:14

if you like, one that is not fossil fuel dependent.

21:17

But because Scotland is so dependent on

21:19

Aberdeen and North Sea oil,

21:21

this is a dramatic

21:22

and

21:24

bold move by the Scottish Government. And

21:26

I'm part of that. And every day I

21:28

learn about how very difficult it is. But

21:30

where there's a will, I mean, at least the Scottish

21:33

Government is beginning to prepare for this

21:35

change. The British Government has still not

21:37

yet done that. So that would be another thing we could

21:39

do. Three,

21:42

the third thing I really want is for women

21:44

in particular to get a grip

21:46

on economics, really. It's not rocket

21:48

science. I want you to understand the way the

21:50

system is working, because once

21:53

you do, you'll see how easy it is to change.

21:55

You make this important distinction between

21:58

not being... an academic

22:01

economist, or being a professional

22:04

practical economist. In

22:06

what sense would you call yourself a social scientist?

22:10

I'm hoping you think social

22:12

science bridges the practical and the academic.

22:15

I think so, absolutely. Also,

22:18

social sciences implies that economics is

22:20

not

22:20

a science, it's

22:23

part of the social sciences

22:25

and therefore it's much broader. And

22:28

it includes the other social sciences.

22:30

Economics always has done,

22:32

but in the last

22:35

few decades it's narrowed itself down

22:37

to mathematically economics, or

22:40

if you like economics which is supposedly

22:41

scientific, when actually

22:44

it isn't a social science. And if

22:46

I may say so, it's highly

22:47

political. So I think

22:51

it's really important that we should see ourselves

22:53

as a social science. Anne, thank

22:55

you enormously. It's been a really intriguing conversation.

22:58

We've really, from your

23:01

childhood in a mining district in South

23:03

Africa,

23:04

through alternating between First

23:06

World Britain and the global

23:09

South living at first hand, the

23:11

injustices and inequalities between

23:14

the two, you have chosen to intervene

23:17

in the best way you can. Your

23:21

passion about alleviating debt

23:23

and the success in doing that, your

23:26

participation

23:27

in the Green New Deal project, and

23:29

that had cascade effects, of course, it was picked

23:31

up in. It didn't go far here, but it got picked

23:34

up in the United States in the 2017-2018 and run with

23:36

and arguably Joe Biden is doing some of

23:41

those ideas that seemed so off the wall back

23:43

in the day. And your ongoing

23:46

concern at the heart of all of this, to

23:48

put

23:50

finance at the servant of society

23:53

and to do that as a self-professed

23:56

and proud social scientist, it's

23:59

been a great pleasure talking to you.

23:59

Thank you so much. Thank you, Will.

24:02

It's been an honour. Thank you very

24:04

much.

24:09

The Wee Society is brought to you by the Academy

24:11

of Social Sciences. Find out more

24:13

about the Society by going to www.acss.org.uk.

24:20

I'm Will Hutton, the producer is Emily

24:22

Finch, and it's a Whistle Down production. If

24:25

you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast

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