Оглавление
John F. Weeks. The Debt Delusion
CONTENTS
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Guide
Pages
Dedication
The Debt Delusion. Living Within Our Means and Other Fallacies
Introduction: Debt, Deficits and Austerity. A Citizen’s Guide
Austerity Politics
Austerity in Practice
Austerity Politics and Reality
1 We Must Live Within Our Means. The Myth Itself
What Are Our Means?
How Governments Borrow
Public Sector Auto-Finance
From Myth to Reality
2 Governments Must Balance Their Books. The Myth Itself
Budget Uncertainty
Why Do Governments Tax?
From Myth to Reality
3 We Must Tighten Our Belts. The Myth Itself
The Affordability Fallacy
Social Protection and Equity
From Myth to Reality
4 Never Go into Debt. The Myth Itself
Why Debt Accumulates
Debt and the Economic Cycle
Myth and Reality
5 Taxes Are a Burden. The Myth Itself
The Eponymous Taxpayer
Taxes in the Concrete
From Myth to Reality
6 Austerity: There is No Alternative. The Myth Itself
Public Debt Disasters
Euro Debt Crisis and the TINA Principle
Fear of Deficits and Inflation
From Myth to Reality
7 Always an Alternative
Decommissioning Exchange Rates
Decommissioning Monetary Policy
Decommissioning Fiscal Policy
There is an Alternative: Democracy
Index. A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Z
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“Analytically brilliant; crystal clear writing; forensic in its investigation; entertaining and erudite. If you want to know what the alternative to austerity is, there is no better guide.”
Danny Dorling, University of Oxford
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Financial corporations had made large volumes of high-risk loans, which the borrowers could not service once the crisis hit North America and Europe. In several countries, notably the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain, recapitalization prevented the collapse of entire financial sectors. The bonds that rescued private finance meant that the savior governments increased their debts – to save banks and corporations, governments generated budget deficits and accumulated debt. The government of Spain provides a striking case. In 2008 the Spanish public debt stood at a modest 47 percent of GDP, well below that of the putatively prudent German government, at 67 percent. The Spanish public debt ratio rose to 78 percent in 2011 and to 106 percent in 2013, with almost all the additional debt accumulated to recapitalize the private financial sector (numbers from the EU online database “Eurostat”). The growth in public debt involved no spending increase on public services. Those bonds rested in private balance sheets as replacement assets for bad loans made before 2008.
By EU accounting rules, the issue of public bonds to private corporations counted as budgeted expenditures. Even though the Spanish government hardly increased its spending during the global crisis, the recapitalization of private finance resulted in a massive rise in the public-sector deficit. A budget surplus of 2 percent of GDP in 2007 became a deficit of 4.4 percent in 2008 with the first recapitalizations, then 11 percent in 2009, with an average of over 10 percent for the four years 2009–12.
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