Real World Economic Outlook: The Legacy of Globalization: Debt and Deflation

by Ann Pettifor (Editor)

Real World Economic Outlook is a yearly publication that will review issues in the global economy from a different, radical and more realistic perspective. In stark contrast to the output of other institutions like the IMF and World Bank, this annual report is written in an accessible way, informing and offering alternative analyses of the global economy to a wide audience. Real World Economic Outlook 2003 's theme is globalization's true debt deflation. Globalization is examined not as a spontaneous event of economic and technological combustion, but as a deliberate strategy to place finance at the centre of our communities - whether local, national or global. The legacy of this strategy has proved disastrous. Individuals, households, governments and corporations have collectively been lured into a quagmire of debt and deflation.

270 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 2003

About the author

Ann Pettifor is a director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), Honorary Research Fellow at the Political Economy Research Centre at City University (CITYPERC), and a fellow of the New Economics Foundation, London.

She is best known for correctly predicting the Global Financial Crisis in several publications including The New Statesman (Coming soon: the new poor) and her 2006 publication The Coming First World Debt Crisis.

Pettifor's background is in sovereign debt. She was one of the leaders in the Jubilee 2000 debt campaign which succeeded in writing off $100 billion of debts (in nominal terms) owed by 35 of the poorest countries. She is also Executive Director of Advocacy International, which advises governments and organisations on matters relating to international finance and sustainable development.

She recently published Just Money: How Society Can Break the Despotic Power of Finance.

Reviews

[Tom C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly dated now but interesting nonetheless.
Quite repetitive (even if accurate) stressing of the important dangers that liberalised capital flows represent but in other places, somewhat random interjections of other theories. Obviously it is a work from many authors but would be better to see more of a unifying thesis behind the project beyond certain vaguities.