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The truth is the usual menu of reforms can’t stop this failure, so we have to prepare ourselves for the radical transformations ahead.

That the status quo–the current pyramid of wealth and power dominated by the few at the top–has failed is self-evident, but we can’t bear to talk about it.This is not just the result of a corporate media that serves up a steady spew of pro-status quo propaganda–it is also the result of self-censorship and denial.

Why do we avoid talking about the failure of the status quo? We know it is beyond reform, and we’re afraid: afraid that the promises of financial security cannot be kept, afraid of our own precariousness and fragility, and afraid of what will replace the status quo, for we all know Nature abhors a vacuum, and when the status quo crumbles, something else will take its place.

We all prefer the comforting promises of vast central states. No wonder so many Russians pine for the glory days of the Soviet Union, warts and all.

But the central bank/state model has failed, and history can’t be reversed. The failure is not rooted in superficial issues such as which political party is in power, or which regulations are enforced; the failure is structural. The very foundation of the status quo has rotted away, and brushing on another coat of reformist paint will not save our societal house from collapse.

Yet those who benefit from our status quo (or hope to benefit from it upon retirement) naturally deny it has failed, for the reason that it has yet to fail them personally.

So we pretend to not understand that all unsustainable systems eventually collapse, and hope that the next central bank policy–negative interest rates, or bank bail-ins or helicopter money–will postpone it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Entire Status Quo Is a Fraud

April 14, 2016

The Entire Status Quo Is a Fraud

Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences.

This can’t be said politely: the entire status quo in America is a fraud.

The financial system is a fraud.

The political system is a fraud.

National Defense is a fraud.

The healthcare system is a fraud.

Higher education is a fraud.

The mainstream corporate media is a fraud.

Culture–from high to pop–is a fraud.

Need I go on?

We have come to accept fraud as standard operating practice in America, to the detriment of everything that was once worthy. why is this so?

One reason, which I outline in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All, is that centralized hierarchies select for fraud and incompetence. Now that virtually every system in America is centralized or regulated by centralized hierarchies, every system in America is fraudulent and incompetent.

Nassim Taleb explains this further in his recent article How To Legally Own Another Person (via Lew G.)

The three ingredients of fraud are abundant: pressure (to get an A, to please your boss, to make your sales numbers, etc.), rationalization (everybody’s doing it) and opportunity.

Taleb explains why failure and fraud become the status quo: admitting error and changing course are risky, and everyone who accepts the servitude of working in a centralized hierarchy–by definition, obedience to authority is the #1 requirement– is averse to risk.

As as I explain in my book, these systems select for risk aversion and the appearance of obedience to rules and authority while maximizing personal gain: in other words, fraud as a daily way of life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Status Quo Plan – Convince the American Public to Accept Serfdom

March 13, 2016

The Status Quo Plan – Convince the American Public to Accept Serfdom

Earlier today I came across a fantastic article published at Naked Capitalism by a writer known as Gaius Publius.

Yves Smith introduces the piece with the following poignant passage:

Let us not forget that the “things are going to get worse for you” story also conveniently diverts attention from the degree of rent extraction and looting that is taking place. US corporate profit share of GDP has been at record levels, depending on how you compute if, of 10% of 12% of GDP, when no less than Warren Buffett deemed a profit share of over 6% of GDP as unsustainably high as of the early 2000s. That higher profit share is the direct result of workers getting a far lower share of GDP growth than in any post-war expansion. So the increased hardships that ordinary people face is not inevitable, but is to a significant degree due to the ruling classes taking vastly more than their historical share out of greed and short-sightedness.

Now here are some excerpts from the Gaius Publicis piece:

If you think of the country as in decline, as most people do, and you think the cause is the predatory behavior of the big-money elites, as most people do, then you must know you have only two choices — acceptance and resistance.

Why do neo-liberal Democrats, like the Clinton campaign, not want you to have big ideas, like single-payer health care? Because having big ideas is resistance to the bipartisan consensus that runs the country, and they want to stave off that resistance.

But that’s a negative goal, and there’s more. They not only have to stave off your resistance. They have to manage your acceptance of their managed decline in the nation’s wealth and good fortune.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root

February 26, 2016

Seita/Shutterstock

How The Seeds Of Revolution Take Root

What motivates a populace to rebel against a regime?

That the dramatic upheavals of war, pestilence and environmental collapse can trigger social disorder and revolution is well-established. Indeed, this dynamic can be viewed as the standard model of social disorder/revolution: a large-scale crisis—often a bolt-from-the-blue externality—upends the status quo.

Another model identifies warring elites and imperial meddling as a source of revolution: a new elite forcibly replaces the current elite (known colloquially as meet the new boss, same as the old boss) or a dominant nation-state/empire arranges a political coup to replace the current leadership with a more compliant elite.

A third model was described by David Hackett Fischer in The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. By assembling price and wage data stretching back hundreds of years, Fischer found that cycles of economic growth spawn population growth, resulting in more workers entering the market economy. Their earnings trigger a demand-driven expansion of essential commodities such as grain and energy (wood, coal, oil, etc.).

In the initial phase, wages rise and commodity prices remain stable as supplies of essential goods expand and the demand for labor pushes up wages.

But this virtuous cycle reverses when the supply of essentials no longer keeps pace with rising population and demand: the price of essentials begin an inexorable rise even as an oversupply of labor drives down wages.

Fisher found that this wage/price cycle often ends in transformational social upheaval.

While proponents of these models have a wealth of historical examples to draw upon, these models miss a key factor: the vulnerability or resilience of the nation-state facing crises.

Some nations survive invasions, environmental catastrophes, epidemics and inflation without disintegrating into disorder. Something about these nation’s social/ economic /political order makes them more resilient than other nations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Federal Reserve and the Global Fracture

February 17, 2016

The Federal Reserve and the Global Fracture

This interview with Michael Hudson was conducted by Finnish journalist Antti J. Ronkainen.

Antti J. Ronkainen: The Federal Reserve is the most significant central bank in the world. How does it contribute to the domestic policy of the United States?

Michael Hudson: The Federal Reserve supports the status quo. It would not want to create a crisis before the election. Today it is part of the Democratic Party’s re-election campaign, and its job is to serve Hillary Clinton’s campaign contributors on Wall Street. It is trying to spur recovery by resuming its Bubble Economy subsidy for Wall Street, not by supporting the industrial economy. What the economy needs is a debt writedown, not more debt leveraging such as Quantitative Easing has aimed to promote. But the Fed is in a state of denial that the U.S. and European economies are plagued by debt deflation.

The Fed uses only one policy: influencing interest rates by creating bank reserves at low give-away charges. It enables banks too make easy gains simply by borrowing from it and leaving the money on deposit to earn interest (which has been paid since the 2008 crisis to help subsidize the banks, mainly the largest ones). The effect is to fund the asset markets – bonds, stocks and real estate – not the economy at large. Banks also are heavy arbitrage players in foreign exchange markets. But this doesn’t help the economy recover, any more than the ZIRP (Zero Interest-Rate Policy) since 2001 has done for Japan. Financial markets are the liabilities side of the economy’s balance sheet, not the asset side.

The last thing either U.S. party wants is for the election to focus on this policy failure. The Fed, Treasury and Justice Department will be just as pro-Wall Street under Hillary.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Opaque Process of Collapse

February 4, 2016

The Opaque Process of Collapse

The ultimate cost of protecting the privileges of the few at the expense of the many is the dissolution of the social order that enabled the rule of the privileged few.

When I write about the demise of unsustainable systems, readers often ask me to describe the collapse I see as inevitable. This is a tough assignment, as there are as many kinds of collapse as there are systems: fragile ones can collapse suddenly, and resilient ones can decay for years or even decades before finally imploding or withering away.

Another way of describing collapse is: complex systems become much less complex.

Certain features of modern life could collapse without affecting everyday life much–for example, the derivatives markets could stop working and the impact would be enormous on those playing financial games and those who entrusted money to the gamblers, but the consequences would be extremely concentrated in the gambler/speculator class. Despite the usual cries that financial losses in the gambler/speculator class will destroy civilization, the disruptions and losses would be widely dispersed for the economy as a whole.

Other collapses–in food or energy distribution, digital communications, etc.–would have immediate and severe impacts on daily life.

My three primary models of decay and collapse are:

1. Historian David Hackett Fischer’s masterwork The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (given to me by longtime correspondent Cheryl A.)

2. Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

3. The decline of the Western Roman Empire (the process, not Edward Gibbon’s epic 6-volume history). My recommended book on the topic (a short read): The Fall of the Roman Empire

Fischer’s primary thesis is that society and the economy expand in times of plentiful resources and credit, and this increased demand eventually consumes all available resources. When demand exceeds supply and excesses of credit reach extremes, inflation and social disorder arise together.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Top-Down “Solutions” = Institutionalized Serfdom, Bottom-Up Solutions = Reviving Opportunity

January 24, 2016

Top-Down “Solutions” = Institutionalized Serfdom, Bottom-Up Solutions = Reviving Opportunity

If the “solution” doesn’t enable the accumulation of capital in all its forms by individuals and households, it isn’t a real solution–it’s just another top-down scheme that institutionalizes subsistence serfdom.

Phrases like reviving the American Dream emit the lingering stench of empty political rhetoric mouthed by bought-and-paid-for candidates. But if we wave aside this foul smell, we’re left with a very profound topic: reviving broad-based opportunity.

Longtime collaborator Gordon T. Long and I discuss what it will take to revive opportunity in a new 27-minute video Reviving the American Dream.

The status quo “solution” to the decline of opportunities for meaningful work is predictably top-down: guaranteed income for all, a.k.a. “welfare for all.” This is of course a re-hash of the Keynesian Cargo Cult’s 1930 fix for the Great Depression, except on a far grander scale.

There are three completely unsupported assumptions in every proposed “welfare for all” scheme:

1. The trillions of dollars/ euros/ yen etc. required to fund “welfare for all” can be raised from taxing profits and wages. Yet wages and profits are both set to decline sharply in the near-term as the global recession tightens its grip and longer term from the unstoppable forces of automation.

2. Paying people to do nothing will free people to become artists, entrepreneurs, etc. This is a noble ideal, but if we look at communities that have become dependent on top-down central-state welfare, we find despair, social depression and the collapse of real community.

“Welfare for all” debilitates the community by stripping away the sources of meaningful work and positive social roles. I explain this further in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology and Creating Jobs for All.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Propaganda “Has Rendered the Constitutional Right of Free Press Ineffectual”

January 19, 2016

Propaganda “Has Rendered the Constitutional Right of Free Press Ineffectual”

Americans’ trust of the media is at an all-time low.

But most Americans still don’t understand that the U.S. mass media is untrustworthy because it’s completely manipulated to promote propaganda.

Noam Chomsky points out that big status quo-loving corporations own the media, cater to other big status quo-loving advertisers, and filter out stories which question the status quo.

Extreme media consolidation has made the problem worse than ever before.

As many have documented, the media presents a very tiny range of opinions, but then pretends that it is giving the full spectrum of opinions on topics … as a way to dumb down the population.

Lawrence Davidson – history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania – notes:

So well does this process work that it is probably the case that many news editors and broadcasters and most of the public taking in their reporting do not understand that their reductionism has rendered the constitutional right of free press ineffectual.

Really meaningful contrary opinion and reporting (particularly of the progressive persuasion) is so infrequent and marginalized that it stands little chance of competing with the orthodox point of view.

***

President Obama makes speeches critiquing foreign governments, such as that in Egypt, for limiting freedom of the press and speech. There is no doubt that the governments he targets are guilty of gross violations of these rights and many more besides.

But what is equally true is that the vast majority of Americans can listen to the President castigate these governments with no sense of cognitive dissonance. They do not know that they too are victims of propaganda and manipulation.

How could they? They are culturally conditioned to believe that their country is the foundation of freedom and truth. And, beyond their local area, they haven’t the knowledge, or often the interest, to fact-check what their leaders and media agents tell them. That is why it is accurate to describe the U.S. information environment as closed.

Federally Funded Think Tank Explains How U.S. Government Could Attack Decentralized Digital Currencies

January 14, 2016

Federally Funded Think Tank Explains How U.S. Government Could Attack Decentralized Digital Currencies

The RAND report goes one step further and suggests that governments should use advanced technical means to actively disrupt virtual currencies. That includes terrorist groups, but also peaceful deployments of digital currencies by other non-state actors, and a general war on privacy and encryption.

According to the RAND analysts, virtual currencies demonstrate a resilient means of storing data in a highly distributed fashion that is very hard to corrupt and could permit, for instance, information dissemination (blogs, social media, forums, news websites) that is resilient to nation-state interference.

The RAND report seems to suggest pre-emptive strikes and notes that “perhaps the best strategy for the United States and its allies to thwart a VC [virtual currency] deployment would be to target those properties of a VC that would most increase its acceptance, most notably transaction anonymity, security, and availability.”

– From the Bitcoin Magazine article: The RAND Corporation Report: National Security Implications of Virtual Currency

When government devolves into little more than a Banana Republic-style oligarchy burgeoned by a cadre of media propagandists and corrupt politicians, the only objective of said government is to secure, protect and grow its wealth and power. In such circumstances, which are the historical norm not the exception, “the people” come to be seen as the enemy by government and the oligarchy that controls it. Indeed, this is the unfortunate state of affairs in which we find ourselves today.

Decentralized virtual currencies pose a clear threat to government control, which is why their deployment concerns the status quo so much. Some of these concerns were outlined in a recent RAND Corporation report titled, “National Security Implications of Virtual Currency.” Bitcoin Magazine covered some of its more troubling angles in an article published a couple of days ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2016 Theme #2: the Hollow Shell of Democracy

January 5, 2016

2016 Theme #2: the Hollow Shell of Democracy

This week I am addressing themes I see playing out in 2016.

A number of systemic, structural forces are intersecting in 2016. One is the hollowing out of democracy globally.

Democracy has three distinct states of being: formal, in actual practice and informal. Nations that claim the mantle of democracy typically mix features of all three varieties.

Formal democracy is the machinery of legislation and elections. Actual practice is how the machinery functions in the real world. Informal democracy is advocacy via direct action–protests, local movements and spontaneous mass expressions of outrage/disavowal of the status quo.

Formal democracies are being hollowed out. Within the hollow shell of formal democracy, wealthy elites purchase influence and lobbyists so regulation and legislation either actively advance their interests or imposes limits that are easily bypassed or negated in actual practice

For example, the formal machinery of democracy generates tax statutes, but in actual practice, super-wealthy individuals and entities are laws unto themselves: The Oligarch Tax Bracket: How The Tax Rate For The Wealthiest 400 Americans Plunged From 27% To 17% (Zero Hedge)

For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions (New York Times)

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.

In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, We Change Nothing

December 24, 2015

If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created and Distributed, We Change Nothing

The only real solution in my view is to create and distribute money at the base of the pyramid rather than to those in the top of the pyramid.

Many well-intended people want to reform the status quo for all sorts of worthy reasons: to reduce wealth inequality, restore democracy, create good-paying jobs, and so on.

All these goals are laudable, but if we don’t change the way money is created and distributed, nothing really changes: wealth inequality will keep rising, governance will remain a bidding process of the wealthy, wages will continue stagnating, etc.

If the money creation/distribution system isn’t transformed, “reform” is nothing more than ineffectual policy tweaks that offer do-gooders the illusion of progress.

Mike Swanson of Wall Street Window and I discuss the The Future of Currencies and CHS’s New Book A Radically Beneficial World (33:21)

Few are willing to admit that the way we create and distribute money at the top of the wealth pyramid necessarily generates increasing wealth inequalitybecause once we admit this, we realize 1) the money system itself is the source of inequality and 2) we have to change the money system if we want to stave off the inevitable rise of wealth inequality to the point that it generates social disorder.

In the current system, money is created by central and private banks at the top of the wealth/power pyramid, and distributed within the top of the wealth pyramid. The only possible output of this system is rising wealth inequality and debt-serfdom for three reasons:

1. Those with first access to nearly free money can outbid savers and serfs who must borrow at much higher rates of interest to snap up income-producing assets. In effect, borrowing unlimited sums at near-zero rates guarantees that those with this privilege have a built-in advantage in buying income-producing assets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Even a Modest Disruption Will Shatter the Status Quo

November 25, 2015

Why Even a Modest Disruption Will Shatter the Status Quo

Any modest reduction in debt, tax revenues, consumption or new borrowing will bring the entire Status Quo crashing down.

Consider this clipping from the August 1932 San Francisco Chronicle newspaper:

“Reduction of salaries of municipal employees and limitation of city positions to only one member of a household will be sought by (Supervisor) Adolph Uhl in two amendments to the San Francisco charter. The salary reductions would run from 2.5% for the lowest bracket to 25% on salaries of $500 a month or more.”

Thanks to the handy BLS Inflation Calculator we know that $500 a month in 1932 is the equivalent of $8,680 per month (about $104,000) a year.

Imagine the tempest of fury and outrage that would arise should this be proposed the next time local governments run short of funding. Nowadays, the calls would not be for sacrifices from the highly paid public servants but for tax increases of 25% to maintain public-servant wages and benefits while the private sector economy implodes.

This unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good is now endemic. This is the result of two powerful social forces:

1. The loss of any shared sense of purpose or social good worthy of sacrifice.

2. The ascendancy of maximizing private gain by whatever means are available as the primary purpose and goal of the Status Quo.

The dominance of maximizing private gain by whatever means are availableleaves the Status Quo brittle and fragile. Since everyone reckons any sacrifice should fall on someone else, the only possible result is disunity and bitter conflict over modest sacrifices that are too inconsequential to save the system from collapse.

Wishful thinking, mindless optimism and blind adherence to failed ideas also make the Status Quo brittle and fragile. As Michael Grant noted in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why The Status Quo Is Doomed, Part 1

November 17, 2015

Why The Status Quo Is Doomed, Part 1

The current world-system is as doomed as the Titanic.

We’re like the passengers on the Titanic 10 minutes after the mighty ship struck the iceberg: there is virtually no evidence to those on deck or those snug in their warm cabins that everything they reckoned was safe and secure was doomed to perish.

Only those who witnessed the damage below the waterline and who knew the limitations of the ship’s design grasped that the loss of the ship was inevitable and could not be reversed.

The current world-system (call it whatever you like–cartel-crony neoliberal-state capitalism, etc.) is as doomed as the Titanic, for the same reasons: the design of the system is the source of its failure.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the inevitable systemic failure of the current arrangement with Chris Martenson of PeakProsperity.com and Cris Sheridan of the Financial Sense Newshour. The podcasts are:

With Chris Martenson: Fixing The Way We Work: Closing the wealth gap with meaningful work (44:54)

With Cris Sheridan: Book Interview: A Radically Beneficial World

Why is the current world-system doomed?

1. Automation will not just continue replacing human labor–the pace of this trend is increasing exponentially.

2. The wishful thinking that technology always creates more jobs than it destroys is, well, wishful thinking: just ask the music industry, which “grew” in the era of digital technology from a $14 billion industry to a $7 billion industry.

3. The wishful thinking that taxing the owners of robots and software will pay for guaranteed income for all: nobody who favors this seems to have done any math. Current corporate profits (which are about to be eviscerated by global recession and the commoditization of goods and services via automation) are around $1.9 trillion annually, while current government (federal, state, local) spending is $6.2 trillion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An Almost Perfect Storm of Incompetence and Felony

November 11, 2015

An Almost Perfect Storm of Incompetence and Felony

“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.

But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, Age of Uncertainty

“Misdeeds, once exposed, have no refuge but in audacity. And they have accomplices in those who are fearful in their complicity.”
Tacitus, Annals

I was discussing the markets this morning with my friends Dave and Bill Murphy as we generally do. This is what I just wrote back in response to a question from Bill.

I read his columns at LeMetropoleCafe.com every day. His is an amazing crossroads for discussion of things that are interesting about precious metals. I have been a subscriber since 2000. Dave has a new site at Investment Research Dynamics that is quite good and different since he has a very different background in the heart of darkness as a NYC bond trader from mine as a Bell Lab rat and Silicon Valley roustabout.

We just saw a very historically significant decline in the precious metals in terms of days lower without relief. And we have seen a remarkable rise in the US dollar index against the Euro and the Swiss franc that cannot possibly be good for the real economy of the US, when every other developed nation is trying to devalue their currencies to stimulate their exports and inhibit imports.

I believe that a portion of the gold selling in particular is an effort to knock down the open interest in gold for December. If there was any serious attempt for holders of those contracts to stand for delivery, even JPM, which has been obviously building up its stores of gold to act as the ‘fixer’ in that market, would not be able to cover the demand.

JPM was consistently taking delivery for their house account in gold, and just transferred 70,000+ ounces over from Nova Scotia’s warehouse, from whom they had been taking delivery.

As we know, in the last big delivery month, JPM stepped up with an enormous amount of their gold, 400,000+ ounces, to provide enough real bullion to satisfy the contracts standing for delivery. Even now their inventories remain somewhat depleted.

The dollar has also been soaring, because the Fed is trying to pretend that the US is recovering so that they can raise rates. A strong dollar and higher rates are very harmful to what is almost undoubtedly a fragile economic recovery in the US.

And it is fantasy to think that the US can somehow go it alone, and continue to improve while the rest of the world is cutting rates because their economies are slowing.

The Fed wants to raise rates for their own policy purposes, so they can cut them, without going overtly negative, when their latest financial bubble starts to collapse, which it may already be doing. They cannot really raise rates in a Presidential election year past June, so they will push ahead, to serve their own purposes, even as they harm the real economy.

There will be another financial crisis as the IMF warned today. There will be a serious dislocation in several financial markets, including the precious metals and the bonds at some point, that will rock the current system to its foundations.

It is a portion of the credibility trap which inhibits any meaningful remedy and reform.

It is an almost perfect storm of incompetence and felony.

A Stunning Admission From A BOE Central Banker: This Is What The Coming “Helicopter Money” Will Look Like

November 7, 2015

A Stunning Admission From A BOE Central Banker: This Is What The Coming “Helicopter Money” Will Look Like

Back in early 2009, just around the time the Fed announced it would unleash QE1, we warned that any attempt to reflate the debt (a pathway which ultimately leads to hyperinflation as monetary paradrops are the only logical outcome as a result of the deflationary failure of the intermediate steps) would fail, and instead would saddle the world with even more debt, making monetary financing, i.e., paradropping money, the inevitable outcome.

We said that instead, the right move would be to liquidate the excess debt, and start anew – a step which, however, would wipe out trillions in (underwater) equity, something which the status quo would never agree to, as that is where the bulk of its wealth is contained.

7 years later, debt is well over $200 trillion, having risen by more than $60 trillion in the interim, and we are rapidly approaching the peak of the world’s debt capacity as we noted a month ago in “The World Hits Its Credit Limit, And The Debt Market Is Starting To Realize That.”

Today, we find that none other than Adair Turner, a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee and a Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, wrote a long essay in Bloomberg which admits everything we have warned about.

To wit:

Advanced economies’ public debt on average increased by 34 percent of GDP between 2007 and 2014. More important, national incomes and living standards in many countries are 10 percent or more below where they could have been, and are likely to remain there in perpetuity.

The fundamental problem is that modern financial systems inevitably create debt in excessive quantities. The debt they create doesn’t finance new capital investment but the purchase of existing assets, and above all real estate. Debt drives booms and financial busts. And it is a debt overhang from the last boom that explains why recovery from the 2007–2008 crisis has been so anemic.

…click on the above link to access the rest of the article…

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