The Free Ride of the Creditors
August 10, 2026The global trading system does not penalise surpluses. A country can durably suppress domestic demand — restrained wages, high savings, tight fiscal policy — to maximise manufacturing competitiveness. The surplus costs it nothing: deficit partners absorb the adjustment through debt, deindustrialisation and pressure on employment. Keynes foresaw this at Bretton Woods in 1944: his clearing…
Unfathomable
September 26, 2024The US public debt stands at 35.3 trillion dollars, or 35,300,000,000,000. If interest rates returned to 0, and the debt was repaid at a rate of one million per hour, it would take until the year 6047, or 4,023 years, to pay it off. The magnitudes are staggering: today we talk about trillions, whereas…