Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

The Moral Economy Of Debt

Robert Skidelsky 28th October 2014 5 Comments

Robert Skidelsky, Economy Of Debt

Robert Skidelsky

Every economic collapse brings a demand for debt forgiveness. The incomes needed to repay loans have evaporated, and assets posted as collateral have lost value. Creditors demand their pound of flesh; debtors clamor for relief.

Consider Strike Debt, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, which calls itself “a nationwide movement of debt resisters fighting for economic justice and democratic freedom.” Its website argues that “[w]ith stagnant wages, systemic unemployment, and public service cuts” people are being forced into debt in order to obtain the most basic necessities of life, leading them to “surrender [their] futures to the banks.”

One of Strike Debt’s initiatives, “Rolling Jubilee,” crowd-sources funds to buy up and extinguish debt, a process that it calls “collective refusal.” The group’s progress has been impressive, raising more than $700,000 so far and extinguishing debt worth almost $18.6 million.

It is the existence of a secondary debt market that enables Rolling Jubilee to buy debt so cheaply. Financial institutions that have come to doubt their borrowers’ ability to repay sell the debt to third parties at knock-down prices, often for as little as five cents on the dollar. Buyers then attempt to profit by recouping some or all of the debt from the borrowers. The US student-loan provider Sallie Mae admitted that it sells repackaged debt for as little as 15 cents on the dollar.

To draw attention to the often-nefarious practices of debt collectors, Rolling Jubilee recently canceled student debt for 2,761 students of Everest College, a for-profit school whose parent company, Corinthian Colleges, is being sued by the US government for predatory lending. Everest College’s loan portfolio was valued at almost $3.9 million. Rolling Jubilee bought it for $106,709.48, or about three cents on the dollar.

But that is a drop in the ocean. In the US alone, students owe more than $1 trillion, or around 6% of GDP. And the student population is just one of many social groups that lives on debt.

Indeed, throughout the world, the economic downturn of 2008-2009 increased the burden of private and public debt alike – to the point that the public-private distinction became blurred. In a recent speech in Chicago, Irish President Michael D. Higgins explained how private debt became sovereign debt: “As a consequence of the need to borrow so as to finance current expenditure and, above all, as a result of the blanket guarantee extended to the main Irish banks’ assets and liabilities, Ireland’s general government debt increased from 25% of GDP in 2007 to 124% in 2013.”

The Irish government’s aim, of course, was to save the banking system. But the unintended consequence of the bailout was to shatter confidence in the government’s solvency. In the eurozone, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Cyprus all had to restructure their sovereign debt to avoid outright default. Rising debt/GDP ratios cast a pall over fiscal policy, and became the main justification for austerity policies that prolonged the slump.

Creditor - Debtor relationships are always socially negotiated according to Robert Skidelsky.

Creditor – Debtor relationships are always socially negotiated according to Robert Skidelsky.

None of this is new. Creditor-debtor conflict has been the stuff of politics since Babylonian times. Orthodoxy has always upheld the sacred rights of the creditor; political necessity has frequently demanded relief for the debtor. Which side wins in any situation depends on the extent of debtor distress and the strength of the opposing creditor-debtor coalitions.

Morality has always been the intellectual coin of these conflicts. Creditors, asserting their right to be repaid in full, historically have created as many legal and political obstacles to default as possible, insisting on harsh sanctions – garnishment of income, for example, and, at the extreme, imprisonment or even slavery – for borrowers’ failure to honor their debt obligations. Governments that incurred debt in costly wars have been expected to set aside annual “sinking funds” for repayment.

Morality, however, has not been entirely on the side of the creditor. In New Testament Greek, debt means “sin.” But, though it might be sinful to go into debt, Matthew 6:12 supports absolution: “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Widespread social resistance to creditors’ claims on debtors’ property for non-payment has meant that “foreclosure” has rarely been carried to extremes.

The position of debtors was further strengthened by the prohibition of usury – charging unreasonably high interest on money. Interest-rate caps were abolished in Britain only in 1835; the near-zero central-bank rates prevailing since 2009 are a current example of efforts to protect borrowers.

The truth of the matter, as David Graeber points out in his majestic Debt: The First 5,000 Years, is that that the creditor-debtor relationship embodies no iron law of morality; rather, it is a social relationship that always must be negotiated. When quantitative precision and an unyielding approach to debt obligations are the rule, conflict and penury soon follow.

In an effort to stem recurrent debt crises, traditional societies embraced the “Law of Jubilee,” a ceremonial wiping clean of the slate. “The Law of Jubilee,” writes Graeber, “stipulated that all debts be automatically canceled ‘in the Sabbath year’ (that is, after seven years had passed), and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be released.” The Rolling Jubilee is a timely reminder of the continuing relevance of one of the oldest laws of social life.

The moral of the tale is not, as Polonius instructed his son Laertes, “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Without both, humanity might still be living in caves. Rather, we need to limit the supply of and demand for credit to what the economy is capable of producing. How to do this and maintain freedom of enterprise is one of the great unsettled questions of political economy.

© Project Syndicate

Robert Skidelsky

Robert Skidelsky, professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University and a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is the author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes and a member of the British House of Lords.

Home ・ Economy ・ The Moral Economy Of Debt

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

biodiversity,COP15,China,climate COP15: negotiations must come out of the shadowsSandrine Maljean-Dubois
reproductive rights,abortion,hungary,eastern europe,united states,us,poland The uneven battlefield of reproductive rightsAndrea Pető
LNG,EIB,liquefied natural gas,European Investment Bank Ukraine is no reason to invest in gasXavier Sol
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
Fit for 55,access to justice,Aarhus convention Access to justice in the ‘Fit for 55’ packageFrederik Hafen

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube