When he took over as vice president in 2018, Luis de Guindos, 66, faced what seemed like the most uneventful term in the history of the European Central Bank (ECB). “I thought we weren’t going to move interest rates, neither up nor down; they had been unchanged for a long time, and I thought they would stay that way,” he recalls now.
Mariana Mazzucato is a live wire. The Italian-American economist (born in Rome 57 years ago, raised in the United States, and based in London) belongs to a group of renowned progressive academics who offer an unapologetic opposition to neoliberalism and the Trumpism that followed, but she does so without affectation or solemnity. She speaks with passion and optimism about a different way of doing and seeing economics. Mazzucato, a professor at University College London, defends the innovative role of the public sector and cites the first mission to the moon, conceived by Kennedy and so relevant these days, as a prime example of public-private collaboration. Her written work is vibrant, and titles such as The Entrepreneurial State and Mission Economy are a testament to this. In this interview, conducted at the Global Progressive Mobilisation (GPM) in Barcelona, she sounded elated about the creation of a Global Council for a Common Good Economy in partnership with the government of Spain. However, she addressed the structural impact of the Trump era on the global economy with less enthusiasm.
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