Tuesday 4 January 2011

The country

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, in his New Year podcast, said that of the current financial crisis, "this is not the Government's debt, it's the country's debt." Presumably "the country" is the same "the country" that is "held to ransom" whenever there's a strike.

This, I assume, is another way of saying "we're all in this together". We are, but some up to their ankles and some up to their necks. I assume that the PM is not talking about private debt - such as many of us owe for mortgages and on credit cards - but money that the Government has borrowed from the banks. We'll all be paying it back through our taxes to the Government, but surely it is still the Government's debt?

Many argue for monetary reform, and in particular the government taking back the sole right to issue money, which should be taken back from the banking system, which creates money from thin air by writing a debt on one side of its balance sheet and an asset on the other. To the asset is added the interest the debtor must pay, but as all money comes from banks, the interest must be paid from more loans.

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