by ANN PETTIFOR
“Greenback, greenback, dollar bill / Just a little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll”
Ray Charles
Economist Ann Pettifor makes the case for a radical transformation of the international monetary system — and the end of US dollar supremacy.
Things are falling apart. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Globalisation cannot hold.
We know that because Henry Paulson, once CEO of Goldman Sachs, and then US Treasury Secretary during the last crisis, is rallying the world’s capitalists to defend globalisation from reshoring, protectionism and immigration controls. Paulson understands that this is a war of ideas. He warned in the columns of the Financial Times that “the impending battle will pit forces of openness rooted in market principles against those of closure across four dimensions: trade, capital flows, innovation and global institutions.”
This “impending battle” is already skewed in favour of the world’s creditor class — backed as they are by central bankers, and in particular by the Federal Reserve, deploying its most potent weapon, the US dollar, that “ little piece of paper, coated with chlorophyll.” Their actions have made clear that there may be no international committee to save the people from a global pandemic, yet there is an international committee creating a “giant safety net” to save private finance from the pandemic. Central bank governors have engaged in decisive, expansive and internationally co-ordinated action to save rentier capitalism even while the governments of Presidents Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi and Johnson clown around, grievously mishandling the Covid-19 crisis. The rise of nationalism and protectionism that has raised these authoritarian leaders to power, coupled with extraordinary central bank action in support of Wall St and the City of London, are all reactions to, and consequences of, negative externalities that are globalisation’s hall marks: connectivity and integration. The pandemic too is a consequence of the systemic health risks inherent in the connectivity and integration of the globalisation project.
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