Hope & Action Podcast

Dan Edelstyn chats to Sarah-Jayne Clifton, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign about the huge changes afoot in the UK and international economies. Among the subjects discussed are the Bank of England who are effectively, bailing out banks, businesses, normal people, while their jobs have stopped or their businesses are stopped. Spanish universal basic income. How to keep up the momentum towards a fairer economy for all.. Edelstyn asks: "So I guess, the question that I'm really interested in is if all of these new things are shown to be possible, is this also a time where we could argue that a personal debt bailout across Britain is also possible? And also, how necessary do you feel that that is, as the Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign? " Sarah Jayne replies "we're seeing at the moment a simultaneous global health crisis and global economic crisis. And really, in terms of where we're focused, the intersection between debt and finance and poverty, the real impacts of that crisis, we don't think have actually fully been felt yet. They're just starting really to be set in motion. And we actually seen that much worse impacts are on the horizon, both in terms of personal debt in the UK, but also the global South debt situation for poor countries. And I think just to start with, it's just really important to recognize that this is only coming just a decade after the 2008 financial crisis. We were already struggling to really fully recover from that crisis, and now we are being hit by another global economic crisis. And I think what we're seeing also from this is that the resilience of our economies and our health systems is really weak, and it has been weakened by the economic model that we've seen governments pursuing, not just the last 10 years but for the last 40 years. The economic model of neoliberalism, which is about free markets and weak regulation, weak investment in public services, the slashing of the social safety net, which means a lot of countries are just really ill prepared to weather this crisis now, both in terms of being able to actually have the health infrastructure set up to actually support people and get through the pandemic, but also to weather the economic impacts. So on the UK household debt side, obviously we had a household debt crisis before COVID-19. Household debt levels in UK were already at a record level, higher than before 2008, about 230 billion or something. We had 9 million people in this country in problem debt, and the big overlap between people in problem debt and people in poverty, this growing household debt poverty trap. I think it's 14 million people in the UK we're in poverty prior to COVID-19, so that's about 20% of our population. So we were already facing really significant problems. We've seen actually some really quite significant action by the government in the UK to try and mitigate the worst of the economic impacts of the crisis, to really try and protect jobs and incomes, and that is really welcome. We've obviously seen the job retention scheme, where employees can be furloughed on 80% of their wages. Then they realized that actually that left out all self-employed people, so there was action on self-employed. But we know already that there are some really big gaps and there have been some big delays in this government package, that already 2 million self-employed people are just not going to be eligible for this program. Also, a lot of people have already lost their jobs, and it's laying bare something that people who cared about poverty and economic injustice have known for a long time, which is our social safety net is in absolute tatters and people are being asked to live on levels of Universal Credit and Job Seekers Allowance, which is just not possible to live on. So, in the range of £70 to £90/ week. The government's just put it up, but it's obviously still not enough. Which means that people who are reliant on that safety net have no choice really, either to become destitute or to get into further debt. So it was really important for us as an organization to try and address some of these holes that we were seeing in the government's package. So last week, we wrote a letter to the chancellor with around 80 other academics and leaders and civil society organizations, charities, think tanks and others, calling for an urgent additional package of measures specifically at tackling the household debt trap. So in order to basically stop the families and households who are already in debt, getting into more debt because of coronavirus, but also stopping a load more people whose incomes have been impacted by the pandemic from falling into a debt trap as well. The two then discuss "a seismic shift in what's considered politically acceptable intervention in the economy in the last two weeks. We've seen it not just here in the UK, but also across the world."

This week author and academic Max Haiven joins us from lockdown in London Fields. Our theme is artists in a moment of crisis, how do we respond? Coronavirus capitalism, disorientation.. how to remain positive and productive while being trapped between four walls and in the middle of a crisis. We try and bring some positive perspectives amid a moment of global crisis and work out how artists can even just get through this.. Max talks about mutual aid networks, peer to peer support, especially where and when the state will not take responsibility - artists are emerging as protagonists in building systems of care from below. Artists dream outside the box. They are 'abandoned by capitalism'. Artists know how to organise people, and a movement in art towards catalysing community. Artists are emerging as activists with a unique set of skills. Max talks briefly about aid for artists during the coronavirus - but his focus is on universal basic income, and all precariously employed, fully funded public services and reductions in rent, mortgages and debt. The key thing he thinks is that artists need to break the spell, where people think we should be getting back to 'normal'. Normal is just slow death.. we could have something different - something better. "We can take this weird hiatus to dream as dangerously as possible." Hilary agrees that she has been suffering a crisis in imagination - the big question is how do we create and fuel a national movement of hope. Hilary then wonders how to come to terms with being unable to be together in a space with others making things. A sense of mourning for what went before, a grief for our old lives. We then discuss Astra Taylor who quoted from Milton Friedman who said that 'during a crisis people pick up whatever ideas are lying around". This is the danger - that at the end of this crisis, those to the right will use this to impose another terrible dose of austerity.. we're poised between these two conflicting sets of crisis opportunities.We discuss the Green New Deal very briefly..At times like this we have to get together - so please do share the vodcast with others and let's get together through the new Bank Job membership site. It's free to join - and has been designed as a tool for national organising. People on the ground, working at grassroots. It's not just a battle of ideas - it's about how people are connected together. We need to stop the social atomisation and bring people together. Final thing Max says is there's a third force - we know we have the right, and then a left - he also talks of a 'revengist centrism' A big push from people who have been unseated and want things to change back to 'technocratic neo-liberalism' the 'middle class normal'. Max sees it as a threat. A system that serves the top 20% of earners in society.. We do not need to settle for a return to business as usual!

Dan Edelstyn and Ann Pettifor discuss the economic impacts of the coronavirus on the day the new unemployment numbers came out in the US. Ann's feeling is that capitalism cannot cope with a crisis like this and it will lead to a very deep recession if  not a depression. Below are some excerpts from the conversation. Ann Pettifor:What's happening is, I don't know if there's a word for it, because it's more than momentous, really, it is extraordinary. I have to say that I've always prided myself on my predictive qualities, but I did not predict a pandemic, and I hadn't really thought about pandemics enough. There's a wonderful professor at Oxford, Professor Ian Goldin, who did. He wrote a book six years ago saying this was a big threat to globalization. To be fair to him, Bill Gates also, in 2015 did a Ted Talk in which he warned about pandemics. I missed that. But nevertheless, the principle I was arguing was that it would take a shuddering shock to get politicians to sit up and think about, and change. And that's what we've had. We've had a shuddering, an extraordinary shock. Actually we're about to have what I think would be a catastrophic great depression.Ann Pettifor:Today, the US unemployment numbers came out. They have made 3 million people unemployed in a week. This is unprecedented in history. If you look at the unemployment claims, the graph, the chart, it goes like this, dah, dah, dah, dah, then occasionally bumps up in 2007. Today it went like that. That is huge, and that's just the United States.The thing that that is good about what's happening is that airlines are being grounded, companies who are not sustainable are being closed down, and we know, for example, that China's emissions were cut by a quarter. Over the last quarter, Chinese emissions were cut by 20%. So, we can see emissions coming down as a result of the collapse in economic activity. That's the good news. The closure of airlines is also going to contribute to that good news. The bad news is the cost of the destruction of the economy.Ann Pettifor:The other bit of good news is the suspension of capitalism. Capitalism can't cope with a crisis. Capitalism can't cope with a pandemic. That's how pathetic capitalism is. Instead, so what do we find? The state moves in, and the state bails us all out, and by the state, and I want to stress this so emphatically, that's me and you. So, when we think about the state, we think about bureaucrats and big government departments, and politicians, and we feel it's not part of us. That is not at all the case. Without 30 million British taxpayers regularly paying their taxes, PAYE at the end of the month, or once a year if they were freelancers, and so on, there would be no state, there would be no Bank of England, there would be no quantitative easing, there would be no bailouts. The fact is that the Bank of England is backed by this collateral, because we have a sound tax collection system, and the joy of it is that we had one 30 years ago, and a hundred years ago, and we will have one in 30 years time, and in 100 years time, because we have the public institutions that underpin it.Ann Pettifor:That's why the state has been able to intervene. I really want to stress that, because we don't understand our role in all this. But you need to understand that the British state is backed by 30 million taxpayers. It has immense powers to create the credit in exchange for collateral that the Bank of England can create, and it's called quantitative easing, but you can just call it Central Bank money if you like. The Federal Reserve has got backing the Federal Reserve, 60 million American taxpayers, because it's twice the size or more. I don't know if it's 60 million, I think it's even more than that. So, the dollar and the Federal Reserve is more powerful. So, they've been able to act. What we've seen is that we've seen capitalism collapse, in a nervous jitter, and the state, and the taxpayer, and society, come to the rescue of capitalism.Ann Pettifor:The crucial thing for me now is that we set terms and conditions for these bailouts for these bastards who've paid themselves bonuses, who've bought back the shares on their companies. I was reading about McDonald's today, whose stock market prices went up like that. Why? Because they were buying their own stocks, and who was buying? The managers were buying them, and who was making the money out of it? The managers were making the money out of it. Now the stocks are going like that. Who's going to pay? The workers will all be sacked, or whatever. So, I want us to understand really importantly, our role in all of this, and how vital we tax payers are, and how much leverage we have.Ann Pettifor:Anyway. So, that's what's happening. And the question is whether it's happening at a fast enough pace, whether or not our politicians have got a grip on what's going on. Yesterday, the Bank of England, to my astonishment, said they thought the GDP was going to fall by 4.3%. 4.3%, can you imagine? We'd be lucky if it doesn't fall by 50% really. The idea that the Bank of England, there's some nerd in the Bank of England working out some model, and saying 4.3, just shows you they have no idea. 3 million people made unemployment in the United States in a week, is on a scale that we don't know of, and unheard of. And that's going to happen.Dan Edelstyn:That's crazy.Ann Pettifor:The thing about it is that it has a, what is the word, a ripple effect. Because when you're made unemployed, you don't pay your mortgages, you don't go shopping. You still haven't got anything. You may get $1200 out of the Congress, if you're lucky. You're sick and you go to hospital, you might even die, but you're certainly too sick to work, et cetera. This affects the finance sector, and what the finance sector is realizing is that it is screwed, basically. So, we're seeing Wall Street collapse. We're seeing stock markets have still got further to fall. This is because, a simple thing, Dan, which is that, I don't know, I always feel I have to go back to square one in these conversations, and talk about money. All money is created by me promising to pay. When I apply for a credit card, I don't put any money in my credit card account. I simply promise to pay the £150 for that washing machine, or whatever it is I'm buying, and I promise to pay it in the future. And I do, I pay it over months in the future.Ann Pettifor:But that promise to pay gives me purchasing power. It's money, it gives me a washing machine. That's a wonderful, wonderful thing. But, for it to work, my promise has to be upheld. I've got to pay in the future. Who's going to check on that? The bank checks on that, but also the criminal justice system. I've signed a contract saying I'm going to pay. If I don't pay, ultimately, if I'm a poor person, I'll probably go to jail. If I'm rich, I'll probably be bailed out. But anyway, if I don't pay, there's a criminal justice system there to sort.Ann Pettifor:In the financial system, at the level of Central Bank and the QE, when they apply for credit, when they want something on their overdraft, they have to post collateral. Just as when you take on a mortgage, you have to offer another property as collateral, in case you default. The collateral that they're offering in exchange for cash from the Federal Reserve, in exchange for liquidity, could be stocks and shares, it could be a pension, it could be an insurance contract, all those kinds of things. These are financial assets. An insurance contract is an asset, because it's a contract, it's a promise to pay, and you know that in future you're sitting on the contract, and there's premiums coming into your bank account every month. In that sense, it's a wonderful asset, and some of us wish we had more of those sorts of assets. Anyway, what's happening now, as I speak, is that people are saying, "Hang on a minute, that pension, that mortgage, that insurance contract, is it really worth $100000, 503 million dollars? I'm not sure it is. I think it's worth a third of that."Ann Pettifor:I have a friend who's a trader, who's a big, big trader, and he said to me, "Ann, I'm going into the market, and I'm bidding $6 for a security, and the ask, which is what the holder of the asset is asking for, is saying $16," he said, "I've never seen such a divergence in valuation." That teaches us that the way in which a crisis unfolds is by the wrong valuation of an asset, or the changing valuation of an asset which is acting as collateral to leverage additional finance here. If you say, "I'd like a mortgage of 3 million pounds on my house, because I know my house is worth more than a million pounds, and I'd be able to repay over time," And then suddenly the value of a house falls to 500, and you've borrowed 3 million bucks, 500000, and you've borrowed, you're in deep, deep trouble. That's what's happening to Wall Street at the moment. So, that's a big one.Dan Edelstyn:So, you think it will collapse. Because, I've just been reading this again, and in the introduction, or the first chapter, you talk about the 2008 crisis. There was a moment in the 2008 crisis, I think, where people knew there was a problem, and the governments all came in with their stimulus packages and stuff, initially for a few months, until Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and then that put everything into a big spin, didn't it? It feels as if there's a moment when the... I use this metaphor, and Hilary hates it, but I sometimes think of it as like a duck that's just been shot, and it's still trying to fly, and it thinks it can carry on flying, and doesn't actually realize it's about to crash into the trees with a thump. Is that where we are now? Are we in a duck hunt?Ann Pettifor:No, I think that's a jolly good analogy. The duck is floundering, but then what happens, the state comes along, the Central Bank or the Federal Reserve comes along, and it provides it with a new set of wings. So, what happened in 2007-8, was that exactly that happened. I remember vividly, because I don't know if you remember, Dan, but I wrote a book predicting the crisis. So, when it happened, I never thought it would wait as long as August 2007 to blow. I thought it was going to blow up in the September 2006, and my book was going to be out of date. And even then, neither Central Bank governors, or economists, or politicians, or officials in the treasury, understood what was going on properly, and therefore the public didn't understand what was going on. The left certainly didn't understand what was going on, as you say, only in 2008.Ann Pettifor:In that period, I remember vividly, I even remember, I've got a photograph somewhere of an Evening Standard headline, in which the bankers declare contrition, when they say, "Mea culpa, we're terribly sorry. We done wrong. We done wrong. Will you please punish us?" And to their absolute astonishment, far from punishing them, we gave them a stronger set of wings. We turned them into Eagles. They weren't even little ducks anymore. Now they were Eagles. They were bigger, badder. They could go further. They could speculate even more. They couldn't believe their luck.Ann Pettifor:This had been provided in the first instance, think of RBS. RBS was the biggest bailout in British history. The bailout was set by Labor government, Alistair Darling, And he said, "Please don't anyone give the faintest impression that this is nationalization. We would like you to go on just as before. We're not asking your shareholders to take a big hit. We just want you to pretend you are where you were before, and here's a load of taxpayer's money to help you do that."Ann Pettifor:And to be fair, RBS had to do a lot of restructuring afterwards, and they messed up, and they've had huge problems. I'm not saying that they had just a good time, but we didn't say to them, "Sorry, sweetheart, you can have this money, but the condition is that, number one, you're going to lend money to Britain's SMEs, and you're going to help them get through this crisis. Number two, you're going to lend money at very low interest rates, so that they can afford to borrow." We could've said that. "Number three, if you're going to invest in anything, we want you to invest here in Britain. And number four, will you please pay your taxes." If we just said that, God, we would have had a different world. We never said any of that. We said, "No, we'd like you to be globalized. We want you to be a global bank. We think it's good to have a global bank that's British. And yes, take your money if you like, and don't put it in an Irish or a Delaware tax haven. Who cares? We think everything's hunky-dory.Ann Pettifor:So, what we did was, we strengthened the system, which is why today, the level of debt is twice what it was in 2006-7. In other words, they went out and said, "Right, let's splash, let's create loads of credit, and lend crazy money at very high rates of interest, and get very rich very quickly. Why don't we do that? Why don't we gamble, and make even more money?" And they did. And we've had all these agonizing arguments about how unfair the world is, because we're unequal, and everything. But we created the conditions in which those guys could go and do that.Ann Pettifor:Anyway, so the thing is, but chickens, ducks are coming home to roost, and they're discovering that all of these assets that they created don't have value, and so it's all unraveling. I feel I'm rambling, Daniel.Dan Edelstyn:No, you're not. So, are we about to experience a second shock, I suppose is the question. We've got these stimulus packages which have been approved, and to most people, they think, "Okay, well I've got 80% of my income. Hopefully this is going to go on for, what was it, eight weeks, the official line, or 12 weeks, and then everything will get back to normal." Ann Pettifor:"Then everything will be hunky-dory, and then I'll go shopping."Dan Edelstyn:That's our official account, effectively, I think, which is being managed in the daily press briefings, and then which is being distributed by, let's call them the press, or whatever we're going to call them. The people who just spout the same thing that they're told to write. But my question is, how close to reality do you feel that account is, or what's going to come from this? I'm mindful of the time, because I said 20 minutes, because I know your time, and you've got 15 minutes, you need to get ready for your next one, don't you? When we come out of this, where are we going, and can we get a Green New Deal out of this? Those are two questions.Ann Pettifor:The bottom line. Two things. I think if this is badly managed, and in the United States is being badly managed, it's going to get a whole lot worse. I know we've only got 15 minutes, but I want to quickly say to you, Dan, that it's going to be really hard for us to manage this crisis within the existing international financial system. The real channels for the Green New Deal isn't getting the money. Honestly. We've all seen how easy it is for governments to promise to pay, basically. That's not the problem. The problem is going to be changing the international financial system to enable us to mobilize the finance, and spend the money. And what that means is, right now, and one of the things I'm really angry about at the moment, it just makes my blood boil, is the international system is so designed as to prioritize the interests of capital, over, in the broader sense, labor and the ecosystem.Ann Pettifor:Right now, capital, which is given freedom to roam around the world, without any friction whatsoever, well, virtually without any friction, is rushing out of poor countries, and heading straight for the United States, pushing up the value of the dollar, and investing in what they think is a safe haven. They may not think that after today's unemployment numbers, but nevertheless. What that's doing is it's absolutely sacrificing, crucifying emerging markets, Argentina, South Africa, which is the country of my birth, and where I have family, Turkey, and so on. That is happening as a result of capital flight, and capital flight is enabled by the current system.Ann Pettifor:Secondly, the current system is based on the notion that there should be a reserve currency for the whole world, and that reserve currency should be the currency of the United States of America, and it should be run by the Federal Reserve. So, the dollar is now absolutely fundamental to the global economy. If a poor country like Zambia wants to buy soya beans from Brazil, it cannot do that with the Zambian Kwacha, which is their currency. It has to get holds of greenbacks. It has to get hold of dollars, and then it goes to Brazil and buys soya beans. If South Africa wants to buy oil, or copper, or whatever, similarly. There is currently a shortage of dollars, and the Fed realizes that, because money is all gravitated to the US, because dollars have all fled to the US, the rest of the world doesn't have dollars, can't buy oil, can't buy copper, can't buy soya beans. The Fed has decided to engage in a process called swap lines, whereby they give dollars to, for example, the ECB, to be given to European businesses, and to other OECD countries, but they're not giving dollars to poor countries, and above all, they're not giving dollars to China, because they, they don't believe that China is entitled to dollars, because her currency is not convertible, her government manages the currency.Ann Pettifor:So, China is short of dollars. China is recovering from this initial crisis. This coronavirus, she's beginning to want to buy copper, soya beans, and oil. She doesn't have enough dollars, and the Fed is not going to help. Then we have Mr Pompeo yesterday saying, "We've got to call this flu, the Wuhan flu." The Americans want to make war with these guys. But the very fact that China can't get hold of the currency it needs to buy it's essentials is going to be an issue of huge tension in the world.Ann Pettifor:Hang on. This says a new version of Java is available, would you believe?Ann Pettifor:Anyway, so this is a really big problem, and it's a result of the system. The system was set up under Bretton Woods, and the Americans grabbed the role of the reserve currency. Keynes, at the time, said, "No. We need a currency that doesn't belong to any nation state. That is like an independent Central Bank, and it's not attached to anybody's interests, and, like any old commercial bank on the high street, it manages your assets, and your liabilities, your credits, and your debts and so on, and it takes in deposits in it, and it lends out money." And Keynes was defeated at the Bretton Woods conference by the Americans, who said, "No. We've got to have the dollar, and we demand the dollar because after all we're bailing out the world economy," et cetera. And now we're in this incredibly unbalanced financial system, which benefits the US, and penalizes, especially the poorest countries, and China. Creates enormous political tensions, the potential for war, but also enormous economic imbalances and instabilities.Ann Pettifor:So, China will no doubt, number one, she might sell all her American debt to US treasury bills, and that would be damaging for the Fed, but she may even then just become more protectionist, and more self-sufficient. That's probably going to have to happen to emerging markets as well. I'm hoping they'll impose capital controls, and stop that money from moving around.Ann Pettifor:So, these are conditions in which we want to talk about the Green New Deal, and that's what's going to be hard, because to do the Green New Deal, to mobilize the finance we need to transform the economy away from its addiction to fossil fuels, we have to change this international system. I'll tell you why, Dan. The key thing about the system that Keynes designed post war, was that it was based on international coordination and cooperation. The current system is based on every man for himself. Every state for itself, and the biggest status of bulliest of them all. It's there to create tensions. It's there to split and divide.Ann Pettifor:We now face a major global pandemic, and the United States, Britain cannot cooperate with the Europeans and the Chinese to tackle this because they're so engrossed in their own nationalistic, individualistic, America first kind of attitudes. It's disastrous. We have to change that system just in order to get a new system, a new international system.Ann Pettifor:I have so much trouble with my friends in the green movement and even in economics, who only want to look at the British economy. The British economy is fascinating let's face it, and lots of things happening here. But the British economy is part of this global system, and we have to change that in order to be able to, A, manage our own finances so that we can fulfill our own carbon budgets here at home. We will be given a carbon budget and told you've got to live within that mate, or else your [inaudible 00:26:37]. And then there's a global carbon budget that we need to all work together with to ensure that we achieve the global budget. It might mean we've got to help poor countries. It might mean there's got to be give and take. That's absolutely essential to the Green New Deal. We can't do that within a system that currently is designed to divide and rule. It's designed to break up international coordination. It's designed to attack the World Health Organization, and United Nations that had been set up to help us coordinate. That's the challenge we face with the Green New Deal.Dan Edelstyn:So, should we also set up a new international currency in your opinion, like the HOE Street Central Bank currency?Ann Pettifor:I think we should, definitely.Dan Edelstyn:But it would have to be underwritten, wouldn't it, by taxpayers across across the world?Ann Pettifor:It could be. The thing is what would happen, for it to be international, you'd have to have governments underwrite it, and governments are therefore taxpayers. They're having this row at the moment in Europe, should the ECB be a central bank for the whole of Europe? [inaudible 00:27:48] saying, "No, we don't trust the ECB, you're going to cause inflation." They suddenly realized they need a central bank. Governments need to have to be backed by Central Bank, and central banks have to be backed by governments. We can see, as we speak, Europe fighting over whether or not to be united under the Central Bank that they've created.Ann Pettifor:If they hadn't created the ECB, and they all had their own central banks, they could perhaps then talk about collaborating in a different way. But no, they've set up this monster, and now they're having to agree that it becomes something that enables them to coordinate, and work together around, and cooperate. That's quite heartening to see that today. We need to do that at a global level. The Central Bank would then, it wouldn't be a central bank. What it would be, it would enable states, for its clients, it would have states. The High Street Bank, the HOE Street Bank has locals as its clients, individuals and firms.Ann Pettifor:So, that's for all commercial banks. Central banks don't have high street people, you and me as their clients, and it's not possible for them, because they're organize differently. They have big banks, the banks are their clients, and big financial institutions are their clients. Then you'd have another layer of your global independent bank, and that would have states as its clients. Germany has got a massive surplus, and Portugal's got a deficit, say, and that bag would act as, "Come on, let's balance this out, guys. Germany, you can have your surplus, but you can't have it for long, because I'm going to penalize you, because it's imbalancing the economy, and hey, Portugal, fix your books, and improve your economy, and pay your debts." So, the job of that bank would be to manage those finances across the world.Ann Pettifor:That's what we should have. It shouldn't be linked to any single individual state. That's the point about it. We have something like that, and the IMF was a kind of independent central bank, but it turned out not to be that. Then there's the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, and that was actually originally the model. So, we do have institutions in which states participate, like the IMF, but we would need this to be a bank which would balance out surpluses and deficits across the world. [crosstalk 00:30:24] have the Green New Deal.Dan Edelstyn:That's great. I'm just thinking that I should probably get you to stop, because you have another call in three minutes, and you need to prepare for it, don't you? It was really lovely to speak to you. Just to sum up, basically, what it looks like, possibly a depression, and international chaos on the cards in the wake of the coronavirus, unless people can stop squabbling, and get an actual plan together. Fingers crossed. I'll keep watching.Ann Pettifor:I don't think we can say possibly a recession. There is going to be a deep, deep recession. The question is how deep. And yes, definitely, it's about time that we got together and we worked internationally, and coordinated.

This week’s conversation with Andrew Simms outlines the potential complementary relationship between economic and environmental sustainability. Co-founder of the Green New Deal, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation and founder of the New Weather Institute, Andrew advocates the notion of ecological debt as an illustration of the degree to which economies operate beyond environmental thresholds, and initiated the annual marking of the day when the world is estimated to enter 'overshoot'.

Buckle up, the wonderful Dr. Johnna Montgomerie (Head of International Political Economy dpt at King's College London) is about to set your debt quandary straight. In addition to unpicking how the 2008 financial crash was framed and blamed, Johnna outlines what really happened, why it never should have been allowed and how the core issue is still lying dormant and untreated. But how do we dig ourselves out of the economic hole inflicted upon us? Johnna details her proposed strategies advocating for the abolition of household debts, constructively digressing to justify the semantic necessity for ‘abolition’. While this might sound too good to be true, Johnna is more than equipped to break down the practicalities of her proposition. Listen, learn and strive for implementation.Read Johnna’s ideas here in ‘Should We Abolish Household Debt?’: https://amzn.to/2sKJQCISUBSCRIBE for next week's episode with Andrew Simms of the Green New Deal.

We sat down with Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times to discuss the history of banking, the 2008 financial crash, sovereign money creation and his thoughts on Andrew Ross’ ‘Creditocracy’ thesis. Here’s a link to Martin Wolf’s book, ‘The Shifts and the Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis’: https://amzn.to/2PZ0INU Subscribing would be in your best interest as we’ve got plenty more enticing conversations coming your way.

We’re especially excited to be sharing our conversation with Professor Andrew Ross. Specialising in Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, Ross wrote the movement literature text ‘Creditocracy: and the Case for Debt Refusal’ which provided the main inspiration behind our feature length documentary, ‘Bank Job’ (currently in production). As a university professor, Ross was unsettled by the reality that the vast majority of students were reliant on credit to access higher education. This sparked his involvement as one of the founding members of Occupy Student Debt, the Strike Debt movement and the Rolling Jubilee campaign. The fundamental goal behind these educational movements (and this interview!) is to alter the psychology of the debtor; undoing the guilt and shame that surrounds indebtedness by elucidating the workings of the debt industries. SUBSCRIBE for more conversations with leading thinkers striving for economic change. For a more thorough insight into Ross’ instrumental ideas, here’s a link to ‘Creditocracy’: https://amzn.to/2PR4GIy And here’s the FREE Strike Debt’s Debtors’ Resistance Manual: https://strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf  

We were delighted to snag some time with Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell. We discussed Labour’s proposed strategies for ending the financial mess that the UK has been saddled with since the 2007 crash. Here’s a link to John McDonnell’s edited collection, Economics for the Many: https://amzn.to/2RJC8U1 SUBSCRIBE for next week’s interview with Professor Andrew Ross, a founding member of the Debt Jubilee movement and author of ‘Creditocracy: And the Case for Debt Refusal’ - the book that initiated our whole Bank Job journey. In this series of podcasts, we meet with leading thinkers to explore how to create social change to end the debt crisis.

Neala reads from her excellent book Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation.This reading focuses on the relationship between visual art and politics over the course of the twentieth century as articulated by several key radical aesthetic movements. I have copied Neala's text below."During the same time period, the capitalist mode of unbridled production and consumption achieved ascendency. Capitalist production, in turn, was augmented by the growing impact of mass communication media, which fueled its ethos of over consumption. Art was quickly appropriated and put in service of the capitalist economy. It was demythologized and stripped of meaning, and the reconstructed image moved out of the museum and the cathedrals into the daily lives of people via mass communication media – into movie theatres, onto streets, into peoples’ living rooms.As the twentieth century progressed, the world was awash with visual imagery, and the images took on an increasingly significant role in shaping the reality in which we all live.We live in a visually artful world. Our fascination with form, light, colour and visual texture begins at birth. As we grow the external world takes on increasing distinctions. A small child discovers a flower or a stone and may try to gobble it up, an adult may appreciate the decadent and tragic beauty of a plastic bag flowing as it’s carried helplessly in the wind. We see our first snow and throw ourselves in it, delighted and overcome with excitement and pleasure. But are these experiences aesthetic? Do they belong to the realm of art?We also share our world with other people, and this means we create relationships both with the world around us, and with the people in it. We make decisions in our communities, in our workplaces and on much larger scales, we create national policies and international treaties. We have governments, decide on how we will spend our common wealth – be it on armies and war or on education or health care. We choose our level of participation in these decisions, some of us care deeply, others believe these conversations to be unimportant.Historically, works of art expressed broad social interests and concerns. The production of art was a social activity, involving both the artists themselves and the wider communities in which they worked. The power of the art was drawn from its social function – for instance icons were not just religious pictures, they carried the hopes, dreams and prayers of individuals and communities, states of being, repositories of truth, like snapshots. They were carried into battle in medieval Russia to ensure victory with their power. Icons represented existing and potential social realities, and the yearning to change these was often embedded in the art. Art can also energise action in the political arena. Throughout history Works of art represented a variety of political messages: heroic bronze statues of mounted soldiers in full armour, early photographs of captains of industry standing astride railroad tracks with factory smokestacks in the background, and paintings of great battles celebrating military victories. Dorothea Lange’s stark photographic images brought home the realities of poverty. In Germany, film was used to stoke up feelings of anti-semitism and to build up heroism in the Fuhrer. In tHe 60’s the raised fist summoned feelings of rebellion around the worldThe desire to shape external realities in meaningful ways is a basic human impulse. It’s how we give our lives meaning. Creating meaning is how we order the chaos of life around us, and the need to create stories is born from this same need – to explain the world around us. Art gives us a way of placing meaning, bringing things and places to life. Art is a kind of naming: naming something creates a symbol which can incorporate many levels of individual and collective expression. Symbols are rich packets of information that distill dense contexts of experience. Through this process of symbolic created meaning we communicate with one another and find common ground, a collective sense of community, a shared meaning.Similarly politics is a mechanism for sharing symbols and affirming collective meaning. Art and politics are two of the most powerful mechanisms for visioning, for inventing our future.Together, they hold the key to determining what kind of world we will create.How do we put imagination, desire, and determination to work to enable the realisation of symbolic messages of freedom and future hopes and dreams? What role will art play in addressing the critical challenges of the twenty first century? The shared agenda: to make our lives and our world a fit place to live for all people. We accomplish these goals through developing and implementing effective artistic and political mechanisms for social change.Her book focuses on the most influential political and aesthetic ideas that inspired the art that energized social change and the creartion of new worlds through protest: Dada, surrealism, socialist Realism and the Situationist International (SI) and certain strains of post modern aesthetics.Does art in the final analysis “matter” in the political context? And if it does matter, why and how does “work” to effectively convey a political message? How is vision put to the service of our desires? I believe that our culture is in the midst of a profound transition from print to a richer visual mode of communication. Currently, the control of mass distribution of images is in the hands of very few media corporations and these media serve non-progressive forces worldwide. This situations is apolitical problem. These highly controlled images are designed in a way to get us to think in a certain way, to buy certain things, and to come to certain political conclusions. Understanding the construction and the use of images in politics should be a central mission in the radical community. Art can change the world, it can change minds, hearts and perspectives and it can create new values, new social realities. Only through a deep understanding of how imagery and images affect us can we sort out and then create an alternative, more humane, and nourishing reality.The viewer has an active role too. Communication through art is an interactive process. In true art the visions of artists are social visions bringing together the skillsand personal persepectives of the artist and the aspirations and dreams of the people. How will the viewer perceive the work of art, the political message? From a written to a visual cultureReading and writing are a relatively new means of communication. Until the invention of printing, the skills of reading anad writing were largely confiened to a small elite class of writers, philosophers, and theologians. Prior to the spread of universal written communication, oral transmission of knowledge was the predominant form of communication. Epic narratives were memorized and transmitted from one peron to the next in along tradition of collective memory. Since the early part of the twentieth century, the united states has been gradually shifting from a written to a visual culture. Morris Berman notes in The Twilight of American Culture that today “of the 158 countries in the UN, the US ranks forty ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 per cent of the adult population has never read a book of any kind; and only 6 per cent reads as much as one book a ytear, where book is defined to include romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults in the US are illiterate or read at no better than fifth grade level. If we are shifting to a visual culture the future challenge for political art will be how to communicate and incorporate feelings, emotions and imaginations that express the complexity, subtlety and nuances of political ideas. Compounding these challenges is the shortening of attention spans as new technologies stream endless amounts of information. The sheer volume of visual media and its omnipresence in contemporary culture present major problems for the organization of ideas, for maing sense of the visual worldl around us and for interpreting complex ideas.Among many studies about the transition toward a more visual culture, an essay entitled “Twilight of the books: what will life be like if people stop reading?” merits attention – Caleb Crain draws bleak conclusions – in 1955 reading coNsumed 21 per cent of peoples’ time, by 1995 that number had dropped to 9 per cent. Crain outlines a theory that speculates TV and similar media are taking us into an era of ‘secondary orality’ akin to the primary orality that existed before the emergency of text. The transmission of info orally had significant shortcomings, cultures where memorization is the primary means to preserve and to perpetuate a culture’s idea set may have to come at a significant price: “enormous powers of poetic memorization could be purchased only at the cost of total loss of objectivity.”“Emotional responsiveness to streaming media harks back to the world of primary orality, and, as in Plato’s day, the solidarity amounts to a mutual possession.. and so in a culture of secondary orality, we may be less likely to spend time with ideas we disagree with. Self-dount, therefore, becomes less likely. In fact, doubt of any kind is rarer. Classical aesthetics and the case for meaning.The role of art in culture and the relationship of art to politics have been persistent themses in western philosophy across millennia, beginning with the greeks. Although classical ideas about aesthetics, art and beauty have been largely ignored and even rejected by contemporary philosophers I will briefly explore the tradition to reconsider some of the dropped threads of classical aesthetic arguments in partic the importance of meaning.Art, in the classical tradition, had a specific purpose and outcome. It meant something beyond the art itself – aesthetics and philosophy were deeply entwined. It is important to point this linkage out beceuse in the modern era, aesthetics has consciously been separated from larger questions of collective meaning and purpose. In the modern era, art speaks for itself, it is its own category of knowledge and makes its own rules. It claims no intrinsic meaning beyond itself. Most pre-modern aesthetics on the other hand, was grounded in a coherent metaphysics that served as a standard for evaluating the relative merits of art and the aesthetic experience. Art was to have a specific purpose: to focus on some determined end and to reflect collective meaning. For centuries the concept of beauty dominated the philosophical and aesthetic dialogue in western culture. The idea of beauty was linekd to other larger truths such as the good and the true. From the classical philosophers of plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, through the Christian era, and to a lesser extent into the modern era via the Hegelian philosophers, the discussion focused on what the purpose of art was vis a vis beauty and how we were to recognize beauty in art. The task of the artist was in manys predetermined; artist were called to place their talents at the service of a metaphysical or theological ideal. Howrver beginning with the Renaiisance, through the romantic era, and into the modern era, the roles of art and the artist have changed. The inspiration for art and beauty was increasingly attributed to the private visions of individual artists and by the late nineteenth century the importance of these personal visions came to dominate the aesthetic dialogue.In plato’s philosophy the good, the true, and the beautiful existed in fixed and timeless ideas called the forms. The forms were perfect patterns of ideal states which were permanent and immutable. The real world was a less than perfect copy of the forms. For plato, art has one purpose – to articulate the form of the beautiful. Through the contemplation of art, the soul could approach the ideal form of beautyPlato was more interested in the idea of beauty as a search for metaphysical meaning than he was in the material manifestations and products of art. Representational art conveying higher meaning and transcendent purpose continued to be the dominant aesthetic for thousands of years.The importance of meaning in art persisted into the modern era. Nearly two millenia later, German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel continued the philosophical tradition link art to idealism, bring to the discussion his own ides about the ongoing relationship between the idea and matter as the spirit moved toward what he called the Absolute idea. Art was the sensuous manifestation of the Absolute. While Hegel technically is a modern thinker, his ideas harkened back to Platonic idealism. He wrote: The philosophical idea of the beautiful.. must combine.. metaphysical universality with the determinate content of real particularity.”Art, politics and aesthetics in the modern eraThe transition to the modern era had profound implications for aesthetics. The cultural shifts in philosophy, industrialization processes, science, new modes of mass communication, and rapid urbanizations were manifested in modernist artistic practice and theory. Traditional aesthetic theories came under increasing criticism and fell out of favour. Idealist philosophies were swept aside in the path of materialist and pragmatic ways of knowing. The concept of beauty (or any other absolutists idea) along with the expectation of meaning in art was summarily rejected. Increasingly, art was defined as autonomous, freed up from the constraints of specific meaning or larger purposes that metaphysics or theology prescribed. Instead, modern art proposed its own standard – art for art’s sake. Human psychology and personality played a central role in the modernist vision and the inner world of the individual artist increasingly took precedence over socially engaged art. Style, technique, and subject matter were left undefined and cntstant exploration and experimentation were embraced. All of these tendencies defined the emereging aesthetic of what came to be known as Modernism.Politics, too underwent dramatic changes in the transition to the modern era. The ideologies of progressivism, communism and anarchism all clashed with traditional and conservative views of power and authority, with the abuses of capitalist production, and with the persisting hegemony of the church. In all of the aesthetic movements to be examined in this study, a series of political issues had to be resolved: 1) the role of ideology and propaganda in works of art, 2) the internal conflicts between competing ideologies and agendas – in particular anarchism and communism, 3) the fragmentation of postmodern politics and aesthetics and 4) the role of the state in shaping and controlling aesthetics.At the centre of the story of twentieth century political aesthetics was the struggle between an emerging capitalist consumer aesthetic and the various political and aesthetic rebellions against that hegemony. A succession of self conscious radical aesthetic movements emerged, all of which have had a lasting impact on radical political aesthetics; dada, surrealism, socialist realism, lettrism, the situatinist international and most recently neo dada – and postmodern critical theoryDada and surrealism were the first modernist movements to challenge classical aesthetics and to explicitly raise the question of the relation of art to politics. Dada called into question the entire role of art as representation and rejected an ideological articularion of the movement’s aesthetic approach. In many ways, the dada artists prepared the foundation for later postmodernist anarchist aesthetics. They challeneged not only the ocontent and making of art but the meaning of art itself and its relationship to the political world. The challenged not only the content and making of art, but the meaning aof art itself and its relationship to the political world. They redefined the role of art to demand personal artistic autonomy; to insist on autonomy for art itself as a precondition for a politicised art; and to actively engage the artist in the task of bringing art into every day life.For dadists, the artist-organiser was replaced by the artist-agitator, whose symbolic assault on culture also had precedents in social movement practices, most recently in suffragette attacks on art during 1914Surrealists were more conservative, they made a case for the preeminence of the individual artist’s vision, rejecting the bourgeois aesthetic of the mainstream art community. They highlighted the role of imagination in political change; they challenged traditional techniques and styles, and they consciously rejected realism, calling instead for a sur-realism.Socialist realism highlighted again the importance of the real, and the personal narrative in art – and reasserted the centrality of community in shaping aesthetic style and meaning. The socialist realists celebrated the connection of art to people’s real lives and they were the first to consciously apply defined aesthetic techniques and styles in political propaganda efforts aimed at a mass market and using modern mass communication media.The SI – Situationalist International narrowed and the focus by developing a critique of capitalist consumer aesthetics and the impact of these images on the culture as a wholePostmodern anarchist aesthetics privileges the performative through seamlessly merging art and politics, to create new living realities and to emphasise the shared making of art and political changePerformative art is also consistent with anarchist principles of direct action and autonomous expression. Further, performance is proposed as a way to remain free of the hegemony of the structures of global power and the control of representation by the mass mediaPost modern aesthetics is in many ways a continuation of the earl Dada modernist agenda, and is often referred to as neo Dadaism. It rejects the notion of a fixed ideological mission for art; it is committed to art as action, and it is deeply committed to autonomy for the individual artist. More than dada it emphasizes participatory activities.ENDS

Neala Schleuning is the writer behind "Artpolitik: Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation." The book has been a huge inspiration to us at Bank Job headquarters, and as its central theme it explores the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and charts the destructive energy modernism brought to bear on meaning in art. 4-7 mins Dan and Neala first discuss Plato and Aristotle who put forward the idea that 'the good, the true and the beautiful' should sit right at the heart of aesthetics, in other words art should be 'meaningful'. Poets were banned under Plato as they stirred people up! Ethics is about guiding us collectively, modernism is about individualism, the romantic artist. Art becomes 'art for art's sake.'8-15 mins Their discussion then moves on to a very brief overview of the 20th century and the challenges to modernism - movements insisting on bringing politics back into the conversation. Neala says politics is ethics under another name. They then discuss the First World War, Dadism and Situationist International and the Lettrists, touching on Guy De Bord, who Neala thinks is one of the great lesser sung geniuses of the 20th century. The society of the Spectacle.16-20 mins - start to talk about Chris Marker, The Matrix and They Live, films which reveal the Spectacle as introduced by Neala in the last section.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJC4R1uXDaELooking 'beyond the Spectacle'. Neala talks about this as a 'control system'. Dan likens this to advertising, 'the production of desire' which connects to Neala's term 'capitalist aesthetics'. 21 -27 mins A brief chat about Schumacher - 'Small Is Beautiful' and the Buddhist Economics and what that is meant to be. Situationist International inspired 68 uprisings as well as groups like Adbusters. 'Another world is possible.'27-31 mins we discuss the new mass media - social media - and the politic art and memes that are shared.34-40 mins on optimism amid a world with Trump and Johnson. But is it a great time for progressives? We talk about the necessity of taking action and not just talking. "That's how you create another world, you actualise it, you don't wait for a great leader, you get together with other people."40-47 mins we begin to discuss a new book Neala is writing discussing the Anthropocene, human activity on the geological record, it's not theoretical. She's very interested in the 'dark side of the sublime' Timothy Martin and The Hyper Object. We wrap it up!