c4countdown

I was struck by a headline in the Guardian today:

"IMF urges governments to tackle record global debt of $152tn"

I'm largely ignorant of the whole global financial "scene", I admit. But I don't understand how - if the "global debt" is $152 trillion and every country is "in debt" - how is it possible to "tackle" it? The UK is $2 trillion or so in debt. The USA is $19 trillion in debt. China is $25 trillion in debt. But who are these "debts" owed to? Who would gain from calling in the debts?

Honestly, this sort of thing just confuses me.

I don't get it either. Did find an article about debt cancellation in ancient times. http://www.cadtm.org/The-Long-Tradition-of-Debt

Don't know why we don't just do that. (We'll I kind of know why)

Mark James wrote:I don't get it either. Did find an article about debt cancellation in ancient times. http://www.cadtm.org/The-Long-Tradition-of-Debt

That was interesting, cheers for that. To be simplistic, I suppose it all comes down to "what is money?" and as "money" isn't really anything anymore, it's effectively just numbers on spreadsheets, then global "debt" is pretty meaningless really, isn't it? If all governments (who presumably are all "in debt" to one another) agreed to press a restart button, cancelling out all the debt and effectively starting again, would anyone really notice? But then I suppose that would make Africa a very "rich" continent indeed - as Africa contains more of the natural resources (rare minerals and so on) that people value - and the developed countries wouldn't like that at all. This probably ties into the large-scale abandonment of the "gold standard" somehow, which at least was based on a physical "thing", although I don't know enough about it to really say anything.

I suppose if all debt was cancelled, the whole process would just start over again based on something else - uranium or plutonium resources or something else that will prove useful in the future - and a similar point would be reached anyway.

First result on Google has some interesting explanations/analogies but still I'm not sure I totally get it (the scale of it just blows my mind).

Think one of my biggest hindsight regrets is never studying economics at school. I'd quite like to do an evening class in it.

Jennifer Steadman wrote:First result on Google has some interesting explanations/analogies but still I'm not sure I totally get it (the scale of it just blows my mind).

Nor me. I think I'm even more confused about it than when I started!

I guess the links explained it. But the debt must be owed to each other. For example, Jim owes Jen £2, Jen owes Jono £2, Jono owes Jim £2. Global debt is £6 but nobody really owes anybody anything. Now extrapolate this. ???? ? Profit!

Jon O'Neill wrote:I guess the links explained it. But the debt must be owed to each other. For example, Jim owes Jen £2, Jen owes Jono £2, Jono owes Jim £2. Global debt is £6 but nobody really owes anybody anything. Now extrapolate this. ???? ? Profit!

It's all a load of shit really, isn't it? I propose we wipe out all sovereign debt and return to the bartering system. At least then everyone would get something physical that would be useful to them.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... th/471051/

It seems barter may have been a myth. Either way it's incredibly inefficient. Money is already a physical object that is useful and pretty good way of creating a standard representation of value. It's way more useful to me than 99% of all other physical objects. The most valuable thing isn't even physical though. It's time. Theoretically the best paid people should be the ones who spend their time doing the jobs that nobody else wants to do.

I'll check some of those links tomorrow (well it's today now) but I remember on some panel show in about 2008 when we had the "credit crunch" David Mitchell asked about the missing money "Why don't they just type it back in again?"

Jennifer Steadman wrote:First result on Google has some interesting explanations/analogies but still I'm not sure I totally get it (the scale of it just blows my mind).

Think one of my biggest hindsight regrets is never studying economics at school. I'd quite like to do an evening class in it.

I'm sorry, but I can't resist:

Obviously a piss-take from their original series; all of the "Mr. Cholmondley-Warner"-type stuff was. But it made me laugh at the time and still does now.