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To respond to the challenging times we are living through, physician, humanitarian and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified “Revolutionary Optimism” as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Revolutionary Optimism is itself an infectious, contagious, self-created way of living and connecting with others on the path of love. Once you commit yourself as a Revolutionary Optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, #unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace, always keeping love at the center.
Voiceover - 00:00:03:
Welcome to Revolutionary Optimism. Living at this time in history, we are challenged with the convergence of crises that is affecting our daily lives. Issues like economic hardship, a teetering democracy, and the worsening climate emergency have left many Americans feeling more despair than ever. To respond to the challenging times we're living through, physician, humanitarian, and social justice advocate Dr. Paul Zeitz has identified Revolutionary Optimism as a new cure for hopelessness, despair, and cynicism. Once you commit yourself as a revolutionary optimist, you can bravely unleash your personal power, hashtag unify with others, and accelerate action for our collective repair, justice, and peace. On this podcast, Dr. Zeitz is working to provide you with perspectives from leaders fighting for equity, justice, and peace. On their strategies, insights, and tools for overcoming adversity and driving forward revolutionary transformation with unbridled optimism and real-world pragmatism. In this episode, Dr. Zeitz is talking with Ann Pettifor. Ann Pettifor is a renowned political economist, author, and public speaker, known for her work on sovereign debt and international finance. Ann's trailblazing books include The Case for the Green New Deal, published in 2019, which outlines the urgent economic reforms for tackling climate change and has been translated into multiple languages. Previously, she predicted the 2008 financial crisis and the coming first world debt crisis and led the Jubilee 2000 campaign, which helped cancel $100 billion of debt for the world's poorest nations. As director of Prime, a network promoting Keynesian economists, Ann critiques mainstream economic approaches and advocates for transformative policies. Based in London, she is a key voice in both British and global economic discussions. Here's your host, Dr. Paul Zeitz.
Paul - 00:01:59:
Hey, Ann, so great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's an honor to have you here. And I just... The journey that we've shared, I met you like around 2001 when I was working with the Global AIDS Alliance and we were calling for debt for AIDS and getting treatment to people all around the world. And that's when we met when you were doing your debt relief work. So and then we've been connecting over the years on many other things. So. Thanks for all you do. I just want to honor your influence on me and many, many people. But I really consider you a dear friend and confidant and also mentor. And I feel like you're one of my teachers. So I'm looking forward to reconnecting with you today.
Ann - 00:02:49:
Thank you so much, Paul. It's always a joy to be with you. Really, it is. You know, it's always a joy and it's always uplifting. And it's always Revolutionary Optimism. It's such good optimism. It's wonderful.
Paul - 00:03:03:
Well, you've also seen me in some bad times, you know, when I was struggling. Me too. We've been through the
Ann - 00:03:09:
mill together, as you said. We've been through good times and bad times. But our friendship has lasted and it's deepened, actually.
Paul - 00:03:18:
Yeah, exactly. I'll never forget the one time I had gone on a personal pilgrimage to Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. And I had told you I was going to do this. And I said, Ann, I'm coming to London and I think I'm going to need a hug when I enter your apartment. And wow, I did. I was really traumatized from that. And you were so kind. And I'll never forget that support you offered me during that visit.
Ann - 00:03:45:
It was brave of you, Paul.
Paul - 00:03:47:
Yeah. Yeah, it sure was. So, and give my listeners a little bit about your history. You're from South Africa. How did you enter the field of economics? How do you see the world, you know, from a personal perspective and, you know, help us understand your journey?
Ann - 00:04:05:
Sure. So I was born in South Africa. I grew up in... In the gold mines of South Africa, which is sort of the outback, it was a remote bit of South Africa, gold was discovered there. And so it was a place, a gold rush town is where I grew up, actually. We had the highest birth rate, the highest death rate, and the highest alcohol consumption rate in the country. So there was shooting and tooting going on. And of course, there was apartheid. There were mine workers buried deep down in the gold mines, black mine workers who lived in separate compounds. It was at the very height of apartheid. And I went to a Catholic convent and I was a devout Anglican and I was taught to love my neighbor as myself. And then I discovered that actually it was really quite hard to love my neighbor as myself because my neighbor was racially segregated away from me and I was racially segregated away from my neighbor. And so it began to dawn on me that I lived within a society that was structurally very profoundly unequal and unjust. I think what it gave me was the understanding of societies as structures, as architectures, if you like. So it wasn't possible to be a good Christian. You weren't allowed to be. It was against the law. It was against the law to make love to a black man. It was against the law to love a black woman. It was against the law to sit on a seat reserved for Black people in the park. It was against the law for Black people to sit on a bench reserved for white people in the park. It was against the law to get on a bus if it was a black bus for Black people. So I found myself by the law and by a structural system that was in itself unjust. What had to happen was the system had to be transformed. If we were going to be allowed to be human beings with each other, and of course, we were human beings. You know, you couldn't help being human, but you were conscious all the time that the law was trying to force you apart. So that was my kind of really formative experience. And then, of course, I had huge rows with my family and with my neighbors about apartheid. They said, look. This is natural. You know, this is the way things are. You've just got to accept things. And I couldn't. And that was deeply uncomfortable. You know, it was uncomfortable for everybody around me. Then I went to university and I worked very closely with Black people for the first time. And it was kind of shocking, you know. It was kind of shocking to meet people who were much cleverer than I was and far more successful. And whereas I'd only ever, you know, had relationships with you like people who were servants or were in a subordinate position, workers and so on, employees of my dad's company. So this was extraordinary. And then I got very restless at university and traveled to Europe. And I was in Cyprus last week and I was telling my host there that my very first city, when visiting Europe, was Athens. And I was on a bus, a double-decker bus, and I looked down and there were white men digging up the road. And I had never seen white men digging up the road before. So this sort of kind of, this is how my life had been shaped, essentially. And I've never gone back to South Africa, except, of course, I go back to see family. And whenever there's trauma, whenever someone dies, whenever a new baby's born, I have to. And you keep making those connections. So I know I'm an African at heart, really. But it made me acutely aware of injustice and also acutely aware of hypocrisy. Because while I was brought up in a Christian household and why there was a lot that was Christian about South Africa, the nationalists, the racists, the white supremacists were all profoundly Christian. They were Protestant. The Chastan people they call themselves, the Afrikaners. And so I learned about hypocrisy and about double standards too. And I have a deep, deep contempt for people who are hypocritical. But it's hard not to be hypocritical. You know, I am hypocritical. I have double standards as well. And so I've learned to be kinder to myself and to others as I've got older. And then from there, it wasn't hard. And the other interesting thing about growing up in Volcom in the Orange Free State in South Africa was that the main industry of the town was gold, digging gold. And we had very deep gold mines. We had geologically unusual, very deep gold mines, which spewed out all this amazing gold. And so the price of gold was something very important to the local economy. And I noticed, even as a young girl, and I can remember vividly having arguments with my dad about this, why when everyday prices were going up in the market and at home and so on, when we went shopping, but the gold price had been fixed in 1933 by an American president called President Roosevelt. And it's never risen since then. And my dad. I think my dad, who wasn't very well educated, he'd left school early to go to war in 1939. I think he tried to explain the Bretton Woods system, the international financial system that was created by Roosevelt and Keynes and others after the war. But of course, we didn't, either of us really understand it. But I had seen the sort of oddness of... The main product of our time, a hugely valuable product, gold. Whose value was never allowed to rise. While there were very poor Black people excavating that stuff and sending it to the City of London and so on. And. So that kind of also made me aware that the system wasn't, there was a structure to the system at home, but there was also a structure to the international financial system. And that's my current obsession.
Paul - 00:10:48:
Wow.
Ann - 00:10:49:
Yeah.
Paul - 00:10:50:
I'm so glad we had this opportunity because I don't think I knew all that about you, even though I've known you for 25 years or 20 years. You bridged us over to your current obsession, which is the international financial system. So I want to cover some like hot button topics that are alive for the global community, as you know, but also for us right here living in the United States. So I think it is pretty amazing that you were the one that wrote the first book called The Green New Deal. And I wondered if you could share with us the origins of that idea for you, how it evolved, and then also how it popped over to the United States. You know, if you can tell the backstory of how we came forward with The Green New Deal of our own over here.
Ann - 00:11:46:
So the thing is, first of all, you need to know that it's based on an American idea, the New Deal. And secondly, that actually wasn't my idea. I worked with a group of economists and environmentalists back in 2008. At the height of the global financial crisis, a lovely guy called Colin Hines, who was a big shot at Greenpeace, called us all together to say, look, we're facing multiple crises, the financial crisis, the climate crisis. The inequality crisis, what are we going to do about it? And it was an extraordinary group. And it was Colin's idea to call what we came up with, the solution we came up with, as The Green New Deal. And then in 2019, my publisher wanted me to write a book about the case for The Green New Deal, which is what that was. But that was 11 years after we first thought of it. And the whole idea of gathering back in 2008, the height of the financial crisis, was to come up with something based on the New Deal. Now, what was extraordinary about Roosevelt in the New Deal was that, number one, Roosevelt arrived when he was elected and inaugurated.
Paul - 00:13:02:
In 1932. 1932.
Ann - 00:13:06:
In 1932, and finally becomes president in 1933, but in 1932, on the night of his inauguration, which is-
Paul - 00:13:17:
1933, yeah.
Ann - 00:13:18:
Yeah. He decides to dismantle the global financial system. Now, at that time, it was called the gold standard, the architecture of the international system. It had a name. It was called the gold standard. And the thing about it was that it was a system that was governed effectively by Wall Street. And he wanted on the night, the Saturday night, he said to his staff, you know, we have to get off the gold standard. We have to change the system because it's not working for the American people. And Wall Street can't be trusted to run the show, basically. And his staff said, well, you can't possibly do it tonight or tomorrow because tomorrow is a holy day, is a Sabbath. You're going to have to wait till Monday. So on Monday, he closed the banks. And he closed the banks not in order to help the banks, but in order for the banks to hand over their gold to the US Treasury that day. And from that day, the United States came off the gold standard. Now, that caused a global shock because the whole international system was geared around the gold standard. And Roosevelt and Morgenthau, his treasury secretary, argued, we've got to do this because we have a major crisis, two major crises to tackle. Number one, we have high levels of unemployment in the United States. We've had The Great-
Paul - 00:14:41:
The Depression was underway, right?
Ann - 00:14:43:
We've had the The Great Depression. We've had 5,000 banks go under. It's catastrophic. We've got to address that crisis. The American people have elected me because I've got to deal with this crisis. Secondly, we've got a huge environmental crisis, the dust bowl. We have to address that, right? So they were in a position that we-
Paul - 00:15:04:
You weren't thinking about fascism in Europe?
Ann - 00:15:08:
No, they weren't. No, in fact, they weren't. And at that point, they were not. That came later. And no, the Americans were very inward-looking at that time. Indeed, Europeans thought they were too inward-looking and Roosevelt. But that wasn't the point. The point was that, right, he was elected by the people of the United States to deal with the threats they faced. And those were unemployment, largely, and Depression. And then there were the thousands of people that we read about in The Grapes of Wrath, and, you know, affected by the erosion of the soil. But he had to finance that. It's so interesting because... He changed the system and that gave the United States Treasury the power to raise the finance it needed to tackle both unemployment and the dust bowl. And it's subordinated the interests of Wall Street to the interests of the United States government.
Paul - 00:16:10:
Or to the people.
Ann - 00:16:12:
Exactly, to the American people. Morgenthau said, we've moved the government and the treasury from Wall Street to my desk at the treasury. And that was the correct thing to do. That was the democratic thing to do. And to my surprise, Wall Street didn't put up a fuss or they didn't straightaway put up a fight. And that was because actually Wall Street was in deep trouble and needed the state basically help it out. So they went along with it remarkably, really. Anyway, so the reason we chose the name Green New Deal was that we wanted to piggyback on this idea that in order to finance... And tackle this vast problem called the climate crisis, we would need to tackle and transform the financial system. And we would stop. We'd have to stop a system whereby Wall Street governs the economy. And Wall Street today does govern the global economy as well as the American economy. We've got to stop that and make it democratic and ensure that people are elected democratically to run the country. Actually have the power to do so, the financial power to do so. Now, you know, I have to say, Roosevelt made lots of mistakes. He had deep flaws. There was a lot that was racist about his policies or about democratic politics in those days. For example, he set up these, um, forget what they were called now. They were clubs of men who went in and planted trees, essentially, in the middle of the dust bowl. They had these. And they were mainly unemployed white men. And women weren't allowed, nor were Black people. So, you know, there were deep problems, and I'm not here to defend and to say that to the man.
Paul - 00:18:12:
So is it just linking what you're saying to the global financial system run by Wall Street, which is a extractive capitalistic system, the way I describe it?
Ann - 00:18:26:
Yes.
Paul - 00:18:26:
And so in the face of the financial crisis and the climate emergency, the idea was a Green New Deal to bring forward a transformation of the financial system. And did that include, like, recreating or reconstructing what capitalism meant? Like, so it's not just extractive capitalism? Like, what about social democratic capitalism or social democratic entrepreneurship? We need entrepreneurship, but we don't need the extract. And just I want to check this with you. Like, the extractive capitalistic system, I call it a caste system like the apartheid system. It's designed to serve the wealthy oligarchs and oppress the people. So, like, we have to reconstruct it in order to deal with the economic inequality and the climate emergency. Absolutely. Is that right? I mean, do I have that right?
Ann - 00:19:23:
You do have that right. You know, the fact of the matter is that if you put Wall Street, effectively, let's call it Wall Street, and Wall Street embodies private financial. The private financial system is vast now. And unlike in 1933, it is global, right? It operates at a global level beyond the reach of democratic government. Um, You know, there are companies out there that are never affected by what? By government regulation. They effectively don't operate in a world where there is. So the point is to subordinate those companies to the interests of the people, essentially, in a democratic sense, in a social democratic. And yes, of course, I mean, from my perspective, you're not going to get rid of the market. So you are going to have a form of capitalism, but it doesn't have to be the exploitative, extractive capitalism. And at the moment, I call it financialized capitalism. You know, it's not the old-fashioned capitalism where a man or a woman would raise some finance and take some risks and be entrepreneurial and go and take risks and set up a business and that business might fail and they might go bankrupt. No, today's capitalism is almost risk-averse. And expect state guarantees and state backups. You know, all banks on Wall Street today are too big to fail. And furthermore, they expect to extract enormous quantities of wealth for their shareholders and for themselves at levels unprecedented in history. So all of that has to stop. And of course, it especially has to stop in relation to the extraction of the finite assets of the ecosystem. So yeah, absolutely. It'll be transformative.
Paul - 00:21:12:
How do we make it happen? I mean, we saw a campaign, a movement to bring The Green New Deal forward in the United States. It created a counter response by the oligarchs in the oil industry. And then, you know, then under the Biden administration, there was a step forward with the Inflation Reduction Act and the rapid expansion of green energy technology. But the whole war with Russia put the United States on this idea of we need to be oil independent for oil imports. And so we started drill, baby, drill. And Biden improved more permits than Trump did in Trump's term. So, like, I don't see us making serious progress with this idea that you have. So where do you think we're at? Maybe I'm too pessimistic or.
Ann - 00:22:07:
So what happened with the American Green New Deal was that the American left. Was almost exclusively focused on the need for new technology to tackle climate. And on that side of technology as a sort of solution to the problem. Now, the United States needs railway lines and it does need clean energy infrastructure, no question. But technology ain't going to solve this problem, really essentially. But also the American Green New Deal has never looked at Wall Street, never challenged Wall Street, not as far as I know. So that never changed. And the Biden administration, as you say, co-opted many of those people involved in The Green New Deal into the White House, gave them jobs, and they did good work in there. But it was always just focused, as you say, on developing technology for. And developing sound economic policies and also investing enormous amounts in the creation of jobs in the green sector. And we have to applaud them for that. But there was never an attempt to do anything about the rate of extraction by Wall Street. And if you allow that monster, if you like, to carry on growing while you here try to fiddle at the margins with change, there is not going to be change. So-
Paul - 00:23:39:
I think you're right. And, you know, the climate movement here in the United States is really aligned with your analysis, because this whole summer, this past summer, every day there were peaceful resistance happening. People were trying to block entry into Bank of America and Citibank and J.P. Morgan and all the banks were being held accountable. And I think it's your analysis that, you know, it's an aligned analysis. So. I don't know. I don't feel like the movement has enough power, actually, to really win against this, what you call a monster. And, you know, the monster controls the government. So, like, if we...
Ann - 00:24:21:
Yeah, I want to be optimistic because you're right to be optimistic. Because the monster, because Wall Street, those guys. BlackRock, which manages $10 trillion or so of our pension funds, our money, and so on, while they operate, if you like, in the stratosphere beyond the oversight of democratic government, at the same time, they're sort of tethered to the real economy. They're tethered to us. For example, they have our pensions, our savings. They funnel up our savings and they manage them and they charge us fees for managing them without giving us security and confidence that we will get pensions in our old age, for example. We bear all the risk. For example, handing over our pensions to those big organizations. They don't bear the risk. And that is a point which very few people understand. And it's terrifying. But the point is this, that... They depend, you know, if you think about the relationship between Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, you need to know the Federal Reserve is a public body. The people who work there, you know, they are civil servants. They're public servants. They're not independent so-called individuals, you know, who operate out of the wisdom, you know, of their own technocratic wisdom. They are hired by the president.
Paul - 00:25:50:
By the government, yeah.
Ann - 00:25:51:
They're not fired by the president. And they're on the president's payroll, right? So they owe, and that means they're on our payroll, the taxpayer's payroll, your payroll.
Paul - 00:26:01:
Theoretically.
Ann - 00:26:02:
Yeah. But we don't use that as leverage. We don't argue. We don't use our power. We do have power over these guys. We do have power over Wall Street. We could say to Wall Street, thou shalt have no bailout. If your bank fails, tough. You're going to have to face that. Or thou shalt have no subsidy. Or you cannot have access, for example, to the very valuable collateral that the US Treasury generates every day. It's called US Treasury debt, right? Now, everybody complains about the American levels of public debt, but Wall Street cannot cannot function without that debt because the US Treasury bill is a form of collateral. It's like your house or property. Your property has value. You can borrow against it. You can use your property to mortgage more finance, can't you? To remortgage. But your property. Its value isn't entirely certain. You know, its value can go up and down. Your property could fall down. You could be struck by lightning. A treasury bill doesn't suffer those sort of risks, really. And therefore, it is a very safe piece of collateral. And Wall Street can't get enough of it because they create far more credit than collateral form.
Paul - 00:27:32:
Or internally collateral. So they depend on the government collateral. Wow. Thanks for explaining that. I don't think I've ever understood that so clearly.
Ann - 00:27:39:
So the government is what Professor Daniela Gabor calls a collateral factory, right? We churn out this collateral and they need it. So we need to say, you can have access to US Treasury bills, but these are the terms and conditions. You'll obey the law. So, for example, the banks were told recently by the Fed, Wall Street banks, that they had to hold more capital than they hold at the moment. Now, if they were to hold more capital, they would make less profit. And so they said, no, they weren't going to do that. And they made a frightful fuss. And the Fed had to back down. I mean, that was pathetic. And we should not allow that to happen. They bully the Fed when actually they so depend on the Fed. But because we're not aware of that, and this is where the optimism comes in, when we become aware of our power. And if we started to work collectively to deploy that power and to put pressure on the Fed, to put pressure on... Now, I have to say that the right understand that. The Donald Trumpists of this world, there are many people on the right in the United States who hate the Fed, who think the Fed has too much power. And they go to the other extreme. And they also would like to make the Fed a tool, if you like, of a president, like if Donald Trump were to become president. Now, that would be highly dangerous. And I tell you that because I worked in Nigeria. I helped Nigeria clear about $30 billion of debt in 2005. I would hate to have a situation in which politicians could put their hands into... The vaults of the Nigerian bank and help themselves to US Dollars because they don't like to use Nigerian Naira. And US Dollars enables them to buy a fancy property in London, right? That's not the way to run the show. So I'm not advocating that politicians should run it. I'm advocating the fact that the Fed should be far more responsive to the real economy.
Paul - 00:29:55:
Yeah, so that's an advocacy opportunity. I hear you. And I appreciate you challenging my pessimism with... What I would call Revolutionary Optimism. You know, you have a clarity about what we could do. We could put pressure on the president and the Fed to take away the Wall Street control of our extractive capitalistic system. And I think that's a good segue, I think, to... I wanted to ask you, I know you were involved. You were, like, it was noted publicly that you had predicted the 2008 financial crisis. And then when I spoke to you recently, you said you're predicting another one. So I would love to understand your prognostication, mainly what's now, but if you want to, like, tie it to how you figured it out back then, what do you think is happening? And I think that was really important for my listeners and me to understand what is happening in this realm.
Ann - 00:30:59:
Yeah. So back in 2003, 4, 5, I was working at the New Economics Foundation and we were right. I wrote a book, I edited a book in 2003, in which we called the Real World Economic Outlook. And as opposed to the IMF's World Economic Outlook, which was always optimistic. And we said, oh, hang on. And what we saw was that the imbalances in the global economy, the differences between the countries in deficit and the countries in surplus, but also the difference in the amount of debt in the world versus the amount of real income in the world, if you like, the global GDP. It was out of balance. It was massive. And I mean, in that sense, you could do it. You could make a comparison, although I hate to make these household comparisons. But, you know, you know, when your mortgage way exceeds the value of your property or your if you lose your job and you don't have the income that you had when you first took on the mortgage, then the mortgage turns into this great, big, powerful force that's going to destroy you, you know. And so income is really important to tackle debt. And also the value of the assets that you own. And it became very clear to me that we had... Been, if you like, printing. It's not printing money because money doesn't get printed. It's issuing credit. People could go to the bank and get a loan for without even batting an eyelid. And you didn't even have to say, you know, here in Britain, we cheated like mad. We claimed to be earning loads of money. And on the back of that, you know, lousy dealers would. Give us money, would give us a huge loan, right? And that caused, for example, the Northern Rock Bank to fail because people lied. They lied when they filled in their application forms for a loan. And quite a lot of that was happening at a statewide level, at a country and global wide level in the United States. So it seemed to be very obvious there was going to come a point when the banks were going to say, hang on a minute, how are we going to pay for this? And the thing I love, you know The Big Short, the movie, The Big Short?
Paul - 00:33:23:
Vaguely, but go ahead.
Ann - 00:33:25:
It's a great movie, Paul. You'll have to watch it one day. The scene in it where the Wall Street guys go down to Florida because they've heard there's going to be problems.
Paul - 00:33:35:
Oh, yeah. Now I remember the movie, yeah.
Ann - 00:33:37:
Yeah, there's a housing boom. And they go down to Florida. And sure enough, people are flogging mortgages all over the place. And they end up in a nightclub and they're boozing away and there are women, naked women, and there are pole dancers and so on. And this one banker takes the pole dancer, he gets a private room with a pole dancer and dollar bills are flowing and so on. And he says to her, so tell me, love, have you got a mortgage? And she said, yeah, I got a mortgage. He said, you've got a mortgage and all you earn are these dollar bills from pole dancing? She said, yeah. She said, I've got five mortgages. I'll never forget that. You know, it's true. She had five mortgages. That was because J.P. Morgan or, you know, Wall Street. They lent her money because she was very risky, so they could charge her 15% on the loan. Now, that's usury, Paul. You know, I was brought up as a Christian, and usury was a sin, right? But to charge someone 15% on their mortgages because you know they're risky, they may not repay. But you know that in the meantime, you could make a quick buck off that pole dancer. And then when that happened, the guy said, oh, yeah, this is it. We're going to have a big crisis. And it was like that for me. I could see it was just as sure as night followed day that you couldn't have those massive imbalances between borrowing the debt and the actual income and the solidity of that income. So that happened
Paul - 00:35:16:
in 2008 during the election then and Bush lost to Obama and Obama quickly came in and did a big... Wall Street and did not bail out Main Street. And I think we're still I think that led to this populist backlash that led to Trump's first presidency and puts us on the precipice. We don't we're going to air this episode sometime in November, December. So we don't know what the outcome will be, probably. But so what where are we now? What are you seeing now in your interpretation of this ratio of debt and credit?
Ann - 00:35:53:
So there were big changes made after the crisis, right? And they were this, that before the crisis, a bank could go bust. A bank could be at risk and the shareholders could be at risk. After the great financial crisis, they couldn't go bust. They were too big to fail. They're too powerful to fail. They were too big to go to jail. And they are still too big to fail. And that is what, in my view, has led to the popular backlash. You know, people are mad as hell. They're not stupid. They may not be economists, but they can see what you and I can see. That ain't fair, really. And so things did change, but they changed for Wall Street, not for the rest of us.
Paul - 00:36:34:
Was that just like, were there laws written to protect them even further? Or was it just by the nature of how we responded?
Ann - 00:36:42:
Dodd-Frank tried to do something, but really Dodd-Frank was whittled away by lobbyists, by Wall Street, essentially.
Paul - 00:36:51:
By Trump. In the Trump administration, he withdrew the provisions of Dodd-Frank, yeah.
Ann - 00:36:58:
Yeah. And, you know, the thing about Trump is that he came to power on the back of that anger and that righteous anger at what was going on.
Paul - 00:37:07:
Right.
Ann - 00:37:07:
And what he did was he stuck with Wall Street, you know, so it was a terrible betrayal. So if he were to come again, it would be kind of bizarre. I don't think I personally can't see why it will happen. But anyway, so the point is, so the point is, because-
Paul - 00:37:22:
Why it could happen is because people are seeing that they can't afford housing. They have massive amounts of medical debt. They can't. Food prices are outrageous right now. And they're they're struggling. People are working one or two jobs just to get by. And the next generation doesn't have the American dream. So that is what's happening, that it's the ripple of what you're describing is. It's I think that, you know, Biden says, oh, and Harris says, oh, GDP is improving. Well, people don't give a shit about GDP.
Ann - 00:37:57:
Oh, exactly.
Paul - 00:37:58:
It doesn't fit.
Ann - 00:37:59:
And also, you know, while it may be the case that there is tiny uplift in wages and so on, the rich are becoming fantastically wealthy. Look at Elon Musk. You know, he embodies the kind of extraordinary, amazing amounts of wealth that there are. He doesn't know what. He's got. And he's not alone. You know, we can see that the one percent or the 0.01 percent are doing so fantastically well. But the point about this is that because. The changes were made, which was just to bail out the banks and to hold them up. There was no regulation. The thing is far worse. So then if you look at the ratio of debt to income now compared to 2007 or 2005 when I wrote my book. It's much worse now than it was then.
Paul - 00:38:49:
Oh, wow.
Ann - 00:38:50:
But the problem is that the central banks, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the ECB, the Bank of Japan are all dedicated to making sure Wall Street never goes down. And that's our problem, you know. Now, the problem is that we can't let Wall Street go down either because it affects all of us. You know, we would lose, you know, we wouldn't be able to go to an ATM and draw out money. It's as simple as that. We wouldn't get paid. We'd have to invent a new system in the middle of chaos, really. And there would be social and political uprising. It would be just hell on earth, really. So it's not easy. But what we have to do is to put much greater pressure on the Fed to say, look, your priority isn't Wall Street. You can begin. Now, I need to tell you this. You know, I'm busy writing a book on the global system. And so it's what, if I might just quickly divert to this point, I'm writing it for the woman in the street. It's not for academics. It's not for the people. It's for people, right? And the point about it is to say to us all that we have the habit of looking narrowly down here on Earth, if you like. We'd like to focus on the thing that's happening around us. We don't focus on what's happening out there, right? So, for example, I'm looking at the moment at food corporations, the global food corporation. They're out there. They're massive. There's four of them. They're huge multilateral corporations. Now, when we formulate competition policy. We worry about competition here at home in the domestic economy. And they're very happy for us to worry about that because actually what they want is to have no competition out there in the global. Then they've got their no global. Then they can operate in India, China, Africa, wherever they are. And nobody is looking at them. Nobody even-
Paul - 00:40:51:
Like you said, beyond democratic governance.
Ann - 00:40:53:
Yeah. So the point is, but we don't even know that they're there. We don't even know the system is there. We don't even know. And I'm going to call that system. I found it very hard to think of, how do you conceive of it? And I'm going to call it the global casino. And the title of my book, I want it to be Fight the Power of the Global Casino. And it is a casino because they use the money that they suck up, if you like, the pensions, for example, and all of our savings and incomes, and they use it to gamble. And they call it speculation. They call it hedge funding. Hedge funds are not hedge funds. Hedge funds are speculation funds. You hedge if you're a farmer and you're worried about your harvest and what the price of your wheat is going to be, and you very sensibly take out insurance to protect yourself. That's called hedging. Hedge funds don't do that. They do speculation. We should call them speculation funds. Whenever you get a chance, change the-
Paul - 00:41:54:
Change the language. So, Ann, okay, so the debt to income is much larger. The system is more unregulated. We're like ponds in a global casino. And so what's your prediction? When, what is the nature or timing of a possible economic. Collapse of some sort, like the 2008 crisis. Do you think that's imminent? Like, what would bring that on? You know, I
Ann - 00:42:22:
need you to know, we've already had crises like that. We had one in 2020. In February, March 2020. The system, the collapse was as catastrophic as it was-
Paul - 00:42:32:
The COVID collapse.
Ann - 00:42:33:
Yeah. But we didn't see it because we were all, you know, locked down and it was COVID. And the government did bail us out. But they also bailed out the huge shadow banking system out there and the whole financial system. So we've already had crises, right? And the problem is, and you know, what the Fed has said, the governor of the Fed has said, that Wall Street doesn't worry because they have lots of tools and they'll bail them out again, you know. So at the moment, the whole thing is still chugging along. And I need to say this to you, Paul, although I said the system was going to fail and I wrote the book. I was hopeless at the timing. When I gave it to the publisher, she wants to call it the coming first world debt crisis in 2005, 2006. And I said, look, if it's published in September 2006, the crisis will have come and my book will be out of date. And she said, I don't care. We're calling it that. And she had the legal rights over the title. So I was defeated. And thank God I was. And I sat there and I watched between September 2006 and August 2007, which is when the crisis broke. I couldn't believe it would take so long and hang around so long. And then in 2007, something happened and triggered it. It was actually a very minor thing that happened that triggered it. And then I remember flying to New York in February 2008 and seeing my mate, Maz Kessler, whom you know as well, our pal, and discussing with her and with others. And they didn't think there was anything happening. They didn't think the crisis was ongoing until layman's. You know, people have kind of thought, oh, well, it's all being looked after. And then layman's happened. And everybody thought, oh, God, it's blown up altogether. It had been rolling for almost two years by then.
Paul - 00:44:29:
I guess you're saying. We don't know when it could happen. It could happen at any time. And we don't know.
Ann - 00:44:34:
And it's hard to predict the trigger.
Paul - 00:44:37:
The exact trigger. Okay, got it. But we should be aware that this is happening. There could be responses by the Fed and by the government and by Wall Street that would try to stabilize things. But the opportunity that you're uncovering for us is that we as advocates, we as movement leaders and movement members, we have an opportunity to hold these leaders accountable to create a better system that isn't Wall Street focused. It's more the people focused. So that's a good segue to the last part. We're kind of we have a few more minutes left. So, you know, as I said, we're in the middle of this election. We don't know how it's going to turn out. But in either scenario, this is kind of how I'm looking at it, which is that I feel like we're hospice workers trying to help the old systems die peacefully. And we're midwives trying to bring forward the new systems. And so we've been talking about the climate emergency, the financial system, how it's structured. Now, this is all interrelated, as you know, with the democracy crisis. And so I have over the last couple of years been really digging in on how, you know, the fact that we don't really even have a democracy. It's more of an oligarchy, a corporatocracy. Even the whole idea of how elections are run. It's like people in the United States are exhausted from the millions of texts and emails and begging for money and advertising, billions of dollars going into advertising to the media companies that are part of the Wall Street apparatus, the whole system. And it's like designed to separate us and polarize us when actually the majority of Americans agree on most issues. And we know we agree on what solutions we'd like to see brought forward. So this economic system is supported by a completely broken democracy. And we're seeing this rise of authoritarianism. We're at risk of it right here, right now. If we make it through, at least we shouldn't ever let ourselves get this close again. And it's happening globally. So what do you how do you see all this this being interconnected? What kind of international agreements or cooperation would need to be developed? You know, how do we imagine? I guess that's your new book. I guess I'm doing a tee up for your new book. So tell us some of your wisdom that you're about to publish and tease our audience so that they're your first buyers.
Ann - 00:47:17:
So the thing is, the way I see it is this, and it's very much the way we did Jubilee 2000, you know, it was a global campaign. It cancelled $100 billion of debt. And when we started, people said, what do you mean, you know, the debt of African countries? I don't know about that stuff. You know, I worry about my mortgage at home sort of thing. People learned quickly. And that was about the international finance. And they found, after all, it wasn't rocket science, you know. So the point is this. Number one, we have to open our ears to what's going on. You know, we have to learn. That's the point about the book and about reading stuff. I have a subtext, by the way, called System Change. I'd be delighted if your readers joined it.
Paul - 00:48:03:
Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes.
Ann - 00:48:06:
Yeah. Secondly, we have to change our perspective. There's a wonderful philosopher, Paul, whom you would love. He's called Ian McGilchrist. And he's a Scottish thinker, psychologist, analyst, philosopher. And he says that our brain is divided into two hemispheres. And the one hemisphere is for focusing on detail. Think of it as a bird. A bird has to be able to focus on that seed in the middle, that grain that's in the middle of those pebbles. But at the same time, it has to look out for the predator out there that's coming after it. So one half of its brain focuses on the seed. The other half focuses on that. And in Western civilization, we are ultimately focused here on the micro, on the little things. This is what the advertising business does for us. It makes us think everything matters what's on our doorstep. And we ignore what's going on out there, especially if it's a threat. So I think it's about using both hemispheres of the brain. And thirdly, it's about... About, you know, units coming together, basically, and finding the solidarity that you have. I found that in lockdown, actually. I was amazed because I live in a very conservative area. I was amazed at how people spontaneously, first of all, obeyed the law. They stayed at home and there were no policemen on the streets or anything. We did what we were told to do. Secondly, we went gangbusters to help our neighbours, you know, and to help people in distress. So we have this huge capacity for compassion and for empathy and for working together, and we have to understand it. Capitalism tells us to worry about what's going on right here and not worry and not work.
Paul - 00:50:02:
The selfish part of ourselves, yeah.
Ann - 00:50:04:
Yes, and to abandon solidarity. We need solidarity. So for me, it's about, first of all, understanding, secondly, looking and seeing and opening our eyes, and thirdly, organizing and organizing in solidarity. That's why. And I don't believe it's sort of spontaneous. I'm really critical of campaigns that say, you know, we've just got to be, no, no, we can't be spontaneous. We have to be very organized. They are organized. We should be organized. They are very organized. We must be very organized. And that takes discipline, and it takes, you know, and I'm afraid it takes politics. It takes being political. We cannot not be. Political means power. And if you say, sorry, I don't want to have anything to do with power, then don't cry when power has a lot to do with you, basically. Politics is power, and we have to dirty our hands and get political in whatever way. And the fourth thing I want to say is we're going to be forced into this by a, a climate catastrophe, or B, a financial catastrophe. And both of them are not. Unrealizable you know, they are not uneminent, we know the scientists-
Paul - 00:51:23:
Can happen anytime yeah thanks for making that uh link to the COVID disruption that we went through and uh how that unleashed a uh experience collective experience for the most part of solidarity and empathy and that that tapping into that is how we can see our way forward. And so, Ann, with all that you study and know, thank you so much for all these insights. Do you ever get like hopeless and down? And how do you get back to an optimistic side? Or you always just see the glass half full?
Ann - 00:52:00:
I don't know, Paul. It's because... You know, I think I know that ultimately I have faith. And I don't know where it comes from. I'm not particularly religious. I'm a little bit fed up with the churches, but I have faith. And. And I have faith in the best of people. I come across some wonderful people and some very, very good people. And I know there are lots of very bad people and there are some bloody awful people. But I think it's faith and I think it's optimism. But also, I'm mad as hell, actually. I want to see something change.
Paul - 00:52:40:
Well, on that note, I want to thank you for inspiring me deeply today. I always feel like I understand reality better when you and I get to connect. So I appreciate you sharing yourself, your wisdom, your experience with me and my listeners today. And I look forward to connecting with you real soon. We need you over here to help us succeed in our endeavors to bring forward healing and peace. So thank you.
Ann - 00:53:04:
Thank you, Paul. Thanks so much.
Paul - 00:53:07:
Have a great week.
Ann - 00:53:08:
Thank you very much.
Paul - 00:53:16:
I'm feeling a little emotional about that amazing interview with my dear friend, Ann Pettifor. Her life story growing up in South Africa under apartheid and witnessing the inequalities and how that shaped her. And then she became a Keynesian economic thought leader and helped generate the idea of The Green New Deal. Well, actually, before that, she helped lead and pioneer the Jubilee 2000 campaign that led to $100 billion of debt relief for poor countries. And that's when I first met her back in around 2001, when I was working on debt relief in the context of the AIDS crisis. So we've been friends for over 20 years. And we navigated the global economic system, the global climate emergency, and the global democracy crisis. And with all the challenges that we're facing, Ann is sourced from a deep faith in the faith in the people. And that was so heart opening for me to hear the clarity and the. Intent of her faith in people, which drives her Revolutionary Optimism and her belief that we can transform and reconstruct our global financial system to support the well-being and flourishing of all of humanity. So kudos to Ann Pettifor. Go, Ann, go. Look forward to connecting with you soon.
Voiceover - 00:54:48:
Are you ready to be part of the revolution? To learn more about Revolutionary Optimism, please visit revolutionaryoptimism.com. To get to know Dr. Zeitz, please visit drpaulzeitz.com. And to explore building movements, please visit unifymovements.org. If you like this show, be sure to follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss an episode. Revolutionary Optimism, transforming the world one episode at a time.