Customer Reviews

The Coming First World Debt Crisis

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read the book before I read the reviews here. After I read the book, I thought to myself that the author had some interesting ideas. Not many people before 2007 thought so negatively about bankers : before the crisis, bankers were well-respected people who were regarded as upright, intelligent and deservedly rich. Young graduates rushed to join banks not only for the money but the prestige. Now we know how wrong we all were. The banks abused the privilege (of being able to create money from thin air) given to them, chased short-term profits that resulted in the collapse of the system, dragging down innocent people with them. If anything, the book should have served as a warning to policy makers before 2007 that bankers should be reined in. I disagree with the other reader who called the author Marxist and other names. The facts support her views. Banks serve an important function in a capitalist society, but they have to be kept under a leash, otherwise they will do damage to the society. Credit creation is a two-way sword, we need it for economic growth, but if it is given too loosely, it will destroy the system. This is not Marxist speak, this is pragmatism.

In this book published in 2006 Ann Pettifor put forward a detailed scenario in which excessive debt in the developed world caused a serious economic crisis. The 2008 financial crisis proceeded exactly as she suggested it would. Pettifor does an excellent job of explaining how the basic financial structure of our society was undermined in the lead up to our most recent crisis. I have read fairly extensively on economics, and this book contains by far the best explanation of what money is and how it works that I have encountered. Pettifor makes a case for her own solutions to the problems leading up to the crisis, which are mostly radically outside of the mainstream options being considered. Of course the idea of a first world financial collapse was outside of the mainstream when the book was published.

Ultimately the presentation of the flaws in our system that led to the crisis is easily separated from the critique/solutions that Pettifor presents. Pettifor's ideological bent isn't as cut and dry as other reviewers have suggested, people ranging from marxists to libertarians will find suggestions they agree with and others they don't. Even if you aren't amenable to any of the solutions proposed in the book it does such a phenomenal job of outlining the problem that, regardless of your ideological bent, it is well worth your time. If you are looking for an incisive analysis of the underlying flaws that have lately plagued our economy this is the book for you.

i have not received this book. I am till waiting for it s arrival after 5 weeks.
What do I do to ensure i receive it?
Rob Anderson

Generally good, but superseded by better books. I wouldn't go as far as giving it just one star as another reviewer had given it. The author rightfully alludes to bankers as usurers. They and their plutocratic masters (of the likes of the Rothschilds) have, in their astounding greed, put most of us in debt slavery and meagre pensions because governments won't create our debt-free money for us.

ANN PETTIFOR would have done best to have campaigned firstly for 1st world debt, because the already debt-enslaved people and the poorest people in the 1st world ended up paying for most of the $110bn of debt cancelled by the G8 leaders in 1999 (for which she and her ilk had campaigned successfully). The cancelled debt simply gets surreptitiously recouped through taxes in the 1st world. In fact, her and her ilk's bleeding-hearts campaigning for 3rd world country debt-relief has put her et al in moral and financial debt to the already debt-enslaved people and the poorest people in the 1st world because of this.

She has simply been making money out this book without doing anything as constructive as what is recommended in the book "Web of Debt" (ISBN: 0979560829). In Britain, the Money Reform Party and others are doing what she should have done. She and her ilk should have, and should still have signed up with, and taken action for the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (www.simpol.org) that would encourage international agreement to comply with ethical governance and trade.

I bought this book after seeing Pettifor on TV, being credited for predicting the current (2007-onward) credit crises. I guess it serves me right that I did not research who the author was. I thought the book was going to be about economics, or that it would throw some light on the nature and extent of the current crisis. Instead, it is a diatribe from someone who seems to be Marxist-Christian-ecologist.

I did find it interesting that modern Marxists are now speaking with praise of certain classes of businessmen, and even extolling their profit-making. However, this praise is reserved only for those who make "real" things. It is a vague term that is an expansion of the Marxist theory of value, updated to include knowledge work...except financial intermediation.

The book is a rant about modern "usury". I made it into about 30 pages but was falling asleep. So, I've listed my copy on Amazon. I'm writing this review because I don't want anyone buying it with the wrong impression.

The book would be a valuable addition to any college student preparing a paper where he would like to argue about the evils of "globalization", how bankers are usurers who are driving us to exhaust the planets resources, or how the gold standard was like a corset. For everyone else, it's pretty much useless.