𧾠View Thread
𧾠Thread (129 tweets)
#nowreading Debt, by David Graeber https://t.co/56owEhf1fc
Davidâs teaches anthropology at LSE. Heâs written other books like âToward an Anthropological Theory of Valueâ, âFragments of an Anarhist Anthropologyâ and âLost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascarâ. He worked with OWS and coined the slogan âWe are the 99%â
Book opens with a conversation David had with an activist-attorney who provided legal support for anti-poverty groups in London. David told her about his participation in the âglobal justice movementâ, which the media usually calls âanti-globalization movementâ đ¤đ¤
her: did all the tear gas and street battles really accomplish anything? david: we managed to almost completely destroy the IMF her: ? david: the IMF are the worldâs debt enforcers; high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs
DG: during the â70s oil crisis, OPEC countries poured so much of their riches into Western banks that the banks couldnât figure out where to invest the money So Citibank and Chase sent agents persuading Third World dictators to take out loans (âgo-go bankingâ)
DG: they started with very low interest rates that almost immediately skyrocketed to 20%+ due to tight US money policies in early â80s This led to Third World debt crisis IMF stepped in, insisted that poor countries had to abandon price supports on food, etc for refinancing
DG: this led to the collapse of the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth âpoverty, looting of public resources, societal collapse, violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, broken lives
Her: but what was *your* position? DG: abolish the IMF and Third World debt. Debt amnesty, like the biblial Jubilee. 30 years of money flowing from poorest countries to richest was quite enough Her: but they borrowed the money! Surely one has to pay oneâs debts DG: hoo boy
DG: these loans were taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid not by the dictator or his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children
DG: imagine if I walked into a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland and said âI just got a really great tip on the horses; think you could lend me a couple of million quid?â Obviously theyâll laugh me off â but thatâs because they know that they wonât get their money back
DG: but imagine there was a law that said they were guaranteed to get their money back no matter what happened, even if I have to sell my daughter into slavery or harvesting my organs or something. In that case, why not? Thatâs the situation the IMF created at a global level
The phrase âsurely one has to pay oneâs debtsâ is not an economic statement, itâs a moral one. The apparent self-evidence is what makes the statement so insidious, what makes terrible things appear bland and unremarkable
David lived 2 years in Madagascar. When he arrived, there had been a malaria outbreak. It took money to maintain the mosquito eradication program. Govt had to cut it owing to IMF-imposed austerity program. 10,000 people died. He met mothers grieving for lost children
âOne might think that it would be hard to make a case that the loss of ten thousand human lives is really justified in order to ensure that Citybank wouldnât have to cut its losses on one irresponsible loan that wasnât particularly important to its balance sheet anyway.â
Why is the concept of debt so powerful? - consumer debt is lifeblood of economy - all modern nation-states built on deficit spending - debt is central issue of international politics Yet nobody seems to know exactly what it is, or how to think about it
History shows that there is no better way to justify violence, to make violence seem moral, than by reframing it in the language of debt â because it immediately makes it seem that itâs the victim whoâs doing something wrong. Mafiosi, conquerors and violent men: you owe me
Germany had to pay massive reparations after WW1 Iraq is still paying Kuwait for Saddamâs 1990 invasion But... Third World debt works the other way around. These are countries that were attacked and conquered by European countries, and then owe their conquerors money
In 1865, France invaded Madagascar, disbanded the government, declared it a French colony. They imposed heavy taxes on the Malagasy population, and slaughtered a hundred thousand Malagasy people during a revolt in 1947. Madagascar has never done any comparable damage to France
To this day, the Malagasy people are still held to owe France money. The rest of the world accepts the justice of this arrangement. When the âinternational communityâ perceives a moral issue, itâs usually when they feel the Malagasy government is being slow to pay their debts.
Haiti. Nation founded by former plantation slaves who rebelled, and defeated the armies Napoleon sent to return them to bondage. France insisted that the new republic owed it 150,000,000 Francs in damages for the plantations and failed military expeditions
âAll other nations (?!) including the United States agreed to impose an embargo on the country until it was paid. The sum was intentionally impossible (equivalent to $18B) and the resultant embargo ensured that Haiti = debt, poverty and human misery ever since.â
âSometimes though, debt seems to mean the opposite. In the 1980s, the US, which insisted on strict terms for the repayment of Third World debt, itself accrued debts that easily dwarfed the entire Third World combined, mainly fueled by military spending.â
âUS foreign debt, though, takes the form of treasury bonds held by institutional investors in countries (Germany, Japan...) that are in most cases, effectively US military protectorates, covered in US bases full of arms and equipment paid for with that very deficit spendingâ
âThis has changed a little now that China has gotten in on the game â even China finds the fact that it holds so many US treasury bonds makes it to some degree beholden to US interests, rather than the other way aroundâ đ¤
âIn the past, military powers that maintained hundreds of military bases outside their own home territory were ordinarily referred to as âempiresâ, and empires regularly demanded tribute from subject peoples. The US government, of course, insists that it is not an empire...â
In the 1720s, the British public was scandalized when the press exposed that debtorsâ prisons were divided into aristocrats (wined and dined by liveried servants and prostitutes) and commoners (shackled in tiny cells, suffered to die without pity, of hunger)
@visakanv this is the sort of thing i always get stuck on my understanding is that if it's a free market it's by definition not designed. maybe there's some legal weirdness that lets you design a policy that says "you cant implement policies around this" but it seems like a p binary thing https://t.co/i8COtTw87e
