In July 2008, before the crash of Lehman Brothers, I and a group of other thinkers published The Green New Deal.
In the forward to that document we said:
Drawing our inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt's courageous programme launched in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a positive course of action can pull the world back from economic and environmental meltdown. The Green New Deal that we are proposing consists of two main strands.
First, it outlines a structural transformation of the regulation of national and international financial systems, and major changes to taxation systems. And, second, it calls for a sustained programme to invest in and deploy energy conservation and renewable energies, coupled with effective demand management.
In this way we believe we can begin to stabilise the current triple-crunch crisis. We can also lay the foundations for the emergence of a set of resilient low carbon economies, rich in jobs and based on independent sources of energy supply. This will create a more stable economic environment in which there is a lot more local production and distribution, and enhanced national security.
In other words, before the main crisis began we were calling for a green economic recovery.
Today the Guardian reports that:
The leaders of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation on Friday issued a warning about the economic and social risks of austerity programmes in a "call to action" designed to boost growth and fight protectionism.
Expressing concern about the weakness of economic activity and rising unemployment, the IMF's Christine Lagarde, the World Bank's Robert Zoellick and the WTO's Pascal Lamy joined the heads of eight other multilateral and regional institutions in calling for policies to create jobs, tackle inequality and green the global economy.
If only they'd taken heed of what we had to say in 2008. We anticipated all those issues and offered clear, workable prescriptions to tackle these issues at the time. And what we were very clear about was the fact that programmes of austerity could not work: programmes of rebuilding the economy were essential. Instead of those programmes we've had a wasted 2 years and more dedicated to austerity based on the mad logic that we'd 'maxed out the credit card', which was not true. And that's why we're in the mess we're in and that's why the IMF has to act now to say that politicians across Europe, especially, have got this all wrong.
If only they'd taken heed of the Green New Deal in 2008. With small changes it is what we also need now.
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Nice piece by Shiller just posted, ‘Does Austerity Promote Economic Growth?’.
Isn’t it not about time you ran for office !! you have my vote.If you get the chance have a look at the ‘Venus Project’ a scientist called Jacque Fresco has designed a new way of life that could be possible for the human race , It is only based on a Resorce Base Economy thought it’s very interesting maybe one day eh .
But who would I run for?
Richard
Why don’t you run as an independent – I’d give you a donation – if you didn’t tell.
lol
Don’t you laugh, Mr Murphy. I’m deadly serious!
If folk want a Green New deal I am afraid the Vested Interests will not deliver it; that is Institutional Power as State, goverance by financial markets in all their forms and private banks, just to mention the heavy guns.
Those who want the Green New deal have to do it themselves notwithstanding that this is on a modest scale. This may already be underway, there are a scattering of cooperative projects issuing IPS based withdrawable shares, these include, community energy, land trusts, and community horticulture and others such as credit unions. Credit Union development has been stunted up till now by over regulation are now being given more freedom to develop, included in the new regulations the ability to extend their services, beyond just personal accounts, to small enterprises , cooperatives and associations.
Some projects may flounder, but if enough come through they will form an emergenent green sector with the ability to lobby for a more ample Green New Deal. Is this a forlorn hope?
Some interesting things are happening in the USA and some might find Gar Alperovitz talk at Schumacher lectures of interest.
In the USA the United Steel Workers Union are in consultation with the Mondragon Cooperatives, this may lead to a new role for unions.
Did you include taking the power of money creation away from the banking sector? If not then sorry, no vote from me. While the banks control the money supply addressing anything else is just tinkering around the edges.
Read the Courageous State – I tackle the issue there
It seems to me that this is not a “road to Damascus” moment: though I hope I am wrong. I notice that beneath the rhetoric there is an insistence that the danger is to free trade: what they are trying to do is to head of protectionism and civil unrest at the pass. This is not a suddern conversion to real underlying change of premise, as your own proposals are: this is the sops which the powerful give when they go so far that there is real threat to their privilege. It often works: but since there is now a real problem with the whole notion of growth as a long term aspiration, it would need more than this. Or so it seems to me. I do not trust such as the IMF which have been up to their necks in the genesis of the problem all over the world. Perhaps the change of leadership has made a substantive difference: but I am not persuaded that a change at the top will make change in the day to day prescriptions and demands: the IMF and the World Bank have been founding on faith based certainties derived from wrong theories for far too long to alter that in a short time frame. While the warm words are nice the people who work there must necessarily believe the neoliberal hypotheses: for they would not have been recruited to that culture if they did not. It is all well and good to put faith in the efficacy of a “leader”,and that does have great importance: but organisations also have inertia: when we see some change in what the IMF demands of countries they are asked to assist then I will believe this change of heart, But not yet,
I fear you are right
Their motives remain wholly misplaced
We all exist solely to serve the market, not vice versa