Customer Reviews:
 Get your head around our strangely designed global financial system... February 25, 2007
J. Ryan-collins (London, UK)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you've ever looked at headlines in the newspapers about the enormous profits of banks, hedge funds and private equity companies and wondered 'just how do they do this' and 'is it really sustainable'?, then this is the book for you.
Ann Pettifor takes the reader lucidly through the complexities of global financial developments since the 1950s, laying out in clear but passionate terms the great challenge facing modern economies and societies today: how to reform capitalism so that it puts productive activity and investment over the 'making of money from money'.
A truly enlightening read, illustrated with a host of powerful case studies and quotes from the world's great thinkers and economists, past and present, which gives hope that a better world is possible.
The book covers vast ground in a concise 180 pages and the chapters on the nature of money lending and how the deregulation of global capital, driven by US political interests, have led to the erosion of public and democratic control of money supply and the setting of interest rates are particularly important for anyone wishing to understand the strange world that we live in.
Buy it, and tell your friends about it.
highly recommended September 24, 2007
R. K. Welham
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book analyses the nature, the historical context and the potentially horrific consequences of the enormous levels of debt that have grown in the so-called First World countries during recent times. Ann Pettifor shows us clearly the unsustainable structure and dynamics of our global debt-based financial systems, how Third World countries are already enslaved by irredeemable debt and how, unless we act swiftly and decisively, we will be next. She adopts an ethical stance and contrasts and compares the accepted and now orthodox laxity towards money creation and lending practices with the more controlled and conservative traditions of Islam and earlier Christianity. Towards the end of the book she outlines a five-step programme of action through which we can alleviate and manage the coming crisis by radically changing our beliefs, morals, politics, economics and personal behaviour.
Sometime within the next few years at most it is mathematically certain that there must be fundamental change of one sort or another to the current runaway global debt-laden financial system. Ann Pettifor's book alerts us to this fast approaching massive global dislocation and shows us how we might turn it into a change for the betterment and spiritual uplift of humanity rather than allow a world of misery dominated by universal debt-slavery to engulf us. Her message is that we need not be passive victims of the coming crisis and that radical change is both essential and possible. She shows that we all need urgently first to understand the nature and causes of our predicament, and then to influence and encourage those presently in power to undertake the necessary changes. Her tone is compassionate and hopeful, the issues and arguments are presented in clear and jargon-free language and I thoroughly recommend this book.
 Spot on the money, but a bit hazy on economics... July 7, 2008
Too many books
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Ann Pettifor's background appears to be in church groups campaigning for debt cancellation. Her take on debt, in particular third world debt, is primarily a moral one. This is right, as the question only has importance as it is a moral issue. She is also being proven right that, despite what the mainstream news will tell you, the debt crises are gradaully coming closer to the "first world" nations, and will inevitably occur there just as they have done everywhere else.
That said, her understanding of economics and history is a little shaky. In some cases this is only a minor problem, like saying Thatcher was PM in 1978, or the UK lost the Boer War. However, her account of Keynes is a bit mangled, and although she pitches for a moral Guardian-reader audience, her economic understanding probably owes more to writers like Michael Rowbotham. Moreover, although she is justifiably outraged at the dehumanising effects of massive debts, her strident moral tone sometimes reads as if she believes that the banks are run by sadists suicidally bent on causing mayhem for the sheer hell of it. Her attempts at a historical analysis of the development of the modern economy doesn't take into account the fact that economic pressures force people, even those in high places, to act the way they do or else to face bankruptcy themselves.
That said, this is a very timely book, and I'm not sure what other book on this topic is available just now.
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