Category: debt

For China, good news are bad news

January 30, 2022 0

  China’s trade surpluses are beating all their historic records. Despite the stagnation of its national consumption, China is racking up trade surpluses in the way of 94 billion dollars per month. This good news is however not so good because the strong correlation between a nation’s trade balance and its overall consumption. These enormous…

By Michel Santi

Colonizing by Lending

October 14, 2021 0

  Colonisation is no longer what it once was. Actually, it just doesn’t use the same means anymore. Nowadays, to colonise, you lend, and that’s how you enslave. Over history, the debtor’s inability to pay has been used as an excuse to engage armies, like the British invasion of Egypt in 1882 because the country…

By Michel Santi

Taking on debt, yes, but what for?

October 11, 2020 0

Following on from Keynes, it’s been years that I’ve been talking about it and outlining the mechanisms. At present, reality is catching up with the “mainstream” economists who with regret have recognised the absolute necessity for governments to deepen their debts in the current recession brought about by the health crisis. However, while the leaders…

By Michel Santi

This might not be a crisis!

May 9, 2020 0

  The comparison between the Covid-19-stamped economic crisis and the 2007-2008 crisis is fascinating. Do you remember: at the time, the real economy was suffering the direct consequences of an overindebted banking system that made heavy use of leverage. Faced with this existential threat, the response was rather classic, in that it consisted of creating…

By Michel Santi

The Monetary Theory of Happiness

April 29, 2020 0

  A government that puts its monetary system to the service of its citizens and businesses views money as an instrument to improve their prosperity. In the absence of this belief, government action is ineffective or effective for just a minority. This degenerates into “poverty in the midst of plenty” to quote Keynes, who illustrated…

By Michel Santi

Public debt and fake news

September 18, 2017 0

Over the course of its history, the United States of America has seen six episodes of budget surplus. Five of them were immediately followed by depressions. Let us never forget that the orthodoxy – already powerful at the time – had pushed President Herbert Hoover to maintain a budget surplus in 1930, the year of…

By Michel Santi

The European illusion

March 15, 2017 0

The infamous Treaty of Versailles which was imposed on Germany following the First World War forced the nation to pay the astronomical sum of 132 billion Marks. This iniquitous treaty was to provoke the Occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 by France, displeased at the delays in German payments. In 1924 however, the Dawes Plan,…

By Michel Santi