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Event
Historian To Question Britain’s ‘Credible Commitment’ To Public Finance
20 March 2010 — 23 March 2010
Hertfordshire, University of
A lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire, will question Britain’s commitment to sound public finance when she speaks at a conference at the University of Cambridge next week (20-23 March 2010).
Dr Anne Murphy, author of The Origins of English Financial Markets and organiser of the conference entitled Questioning ‘Credible Commitment’: Rethinking the Glorious Revolution and the Rise of Financial Capitalism, will put public debt in a historical context and highlight how lessons must be learned from the past.
In a presentation entitled Demanding ‘credible commitment’: public responses to the failures of the early financial revolution, which Dr Murphy will deliver on 22 March, she will take her audience back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and illustrate how over the years commitment to maintain sound public finance was not just offered from above by the state but was demanded from below by the people who placed their capital in the government’s hands.
She will go on to suggest that, in the current climate, lenders are once more doubting the integrity of British public finance and that the government now risks undermining its hard-won reputation as a ‘credible borrower’.
She will say, “Britain’s decision to spend its way out of recession and the consequent debts that have been incurred have raised serious questions about the management of the public purse and made it essential that we understand the mechanisms by which trust is fostered and maintained.”
Questioning ‘Credible Commitment’: Rethinking the Glorious Revolution and the Rise of Financial Capitalism will take place at Newham College, Cambridge from 20-23 March.
http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~ddc22/credcom2010/