I Am Starting to Get It

There was a book or a blog or something that was pushed at me for years called Empire of Debt. It predicted pretty much what is happening now.

They were obviously right but I think they got the metaphor wrong - at least if it's trying to describe the problem. The problem is not that it's an empire - it may be, but that's more of a descriptor than a critique - the problem is that it is a Dictatorship of Debt.

Hence AIG. Hence the US government, the ultimate debt junkie. Hence Goldman Sachs, which I am sure is well on its way to becoming the next Trilateral Commission in the eyes of the conspiracy theorists.

Their solutions are all based on the idea of reinflation through debt. Defer the problem to the next generation and the next and the next; stand at the arterial money flows and siphon off small percentages of huge torrents of cash; shrink the number of players at the top. (Bye-bye Lehman - too bad you didn't have enough friends on the way down.)

The answer for the revolutionaries: convert the Dictatorship of Debt into the Republic of Equity.

More later. Back to work. Keep the day job.

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