'I wont be an apologist for the current #SchwarzeNull system'
'there is an issue with fiscal sustainability, with building future fire power for a country with an ageing population'
'sustainability = fit for the future, not about control or anti-state ideology' (hawks will be hawks)
'true that public investment has fallen, but social spending hasnt, and that shows you can target inequality with fiscal discipline'
we now move into language games: 'we should think carefully about what is public investment'
'German conservative forces are less powerful than those in the US or UK... we collective recognize that we need a strong and efficient state that can deal with climate crisis'
this entire speech is an apology for #SchwarzeNull: 'not entirely the fault of austerity that public investment has fallen dramatically in Germany'
another Picketty public service: 'if r<g, of course we can rethink the fiscal stance away from debt break'
oh no, now we're into 'tweaking the debt break' territory, which I guess is as good as it gets given German political consensus
wow: same former Ministry of Finance/father of debt break 'Fiscal Compact was a stupid German idea pushed to discipline periphery countries'
This session made me think of Hannah Arendt, version 'banality of macroeconomic evil'
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Two amazing Global South progressives and a Nobel prize winner walk into an Oxfam panel on post-neoliberalism
Stiglitz: w neoliberalism, the growth of financial markets changed the political game tremendously
Lula 's special advisor @AAbdenur - clear mismatch - Global North openly exposing industrial policy but pushing IMF/World Bank to continue with austerity and partnerships for hyper-financialisation
missing from this @FT account of the rapid rise of infrastructure as an asset class is the sustained effort that G20 governments have put into derisking infrastructure assets for institutional capital - this is the derisking state in action #WallStreetConsensus
@FT with @BJMbraun we've termed this a weak derisking macrofinancial regime - a set of policies (as in the G20 Infrastructure as an Asset Class agenda, or World Bank Maximising Finance for Development) that seeks to mobilise private capital into infrastructure osf.io/preprints/soca…
BlackRock 's recent acquisition of GIP is a bet that governments - under ideological or real constraints on fiscal space - will not pursue public infrastrucuture projects but instead continue to derisk private capital
I did not expect this, but Rachel Reeves' Mais lecture is a lot more interesting - and dare I say, promising - than either the commentariat focused on fiscal rules or the past weeks of 'maxxed credit cards' would have us believe
some parts are taking a direct swipe at us advocates of Big (Green) State, but it's a careful articulation of the alternative rather than the empty austerity ideology of 'maxxed out credit cards'
1. We're getting climate politics back at the Bank of England.
Remember, under Carney, it became a world leader in climate policy making, not the greenwashed US Fed version of 'disclosure'/single materiality that Bailey prefers.
it is a strategic and tactical mistake for progressives to centre the superrich in climate politics.
Tactics - global tax system is organised to enable rampant tax avoidance + evasion for both high net worth individuals & corporations.
Recent efforts to reform have been far less successful than we'd have expected a decade after Piketty made inequality politically salient at global level. Fighting for global solutions around taxes is important, but shouldnt be the key front.
Global South voices - here the President of Colombia - read in the European/US support of the genocide in Gaza a blueprint, an experiment for ecofascism that 'treats us as disposable lives'.
'we are heading to barbary. Humanity, especially in the South, depends on the road we choose to address the climate crisis produced by the Global North. Gaza is the first experiment to treat us as disposable lives.'
Clearer European minds anticipated this response to von der Leyen - but the damage is done
the @ecb hiked rates to highest level ever today, but this matter less.
@Lagarde promised European Parliament to return ECB to Paris climate commitments but still nothing!
in a new report we show it can do Green Unwinding @AuroreLalucq @henrikehahn greenpeace.de/publikationen/…
we are in the middle of a climate emergency, and the @ecb has stepped back from cleaning its portfolio of dirty bonds -
for no other reason except the (imagined) danger that @lagarde may be seen as 'Mme Climate' instead of fighting inflation.
but fighting inflation & pursuing its 'within mandate' climate rules are not at odds with each other - the opposite.
Mme @lagarde should remind her PR team that subsidising fossil capital, as ECB continues to do via its portfolio of corporate bonds, amplifies supply pressures