debt

History Shows Debt Relief is All-American

by Chloe Thurston and Emily Zackin

Throughout American history state legislatures have passed debt relief over the objections of creditors and the courts, responding to the economic needs of the citizenry and defying the idea that indebtedness was a personal failing. 

Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross See the Car as a Machine for Unfreedom

The automobile is an object made to symbolize freedom that actually physically embodies a host of coercive relationships to work, debt, surveillance and policing, and the basic right of free movement, according to the authors of a new study. 

With SCOTUS Poised to Block Modest Debt Relief, What's Next for Debt Abolitionists?

by Eleni Schirmer

Organizing debtors to demand and achieve forgiveness—or abolition—of debt requires convincing people that indebtedness exposes social, not individual, failures. 

Is There a Biblical Solution to the Modern Problem of Debt?

by Eva von Dassow

Many are inspired by Old Testament rules for debt jubilees, but, while the practice has a historical basis, that history shows debt forgiveness was part of an unequal society in which forgiving old debts simply enabled the masses to take on new ones. 

Debt Jubilees: An Ancient Solution for a Modern Problem

by Richard Vague

"Like our ancient forefathers, we need to reset our economy by offering hard-pressed debtors a jubilee now, not in some utopian future."

Indentured Students: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer on Student Debt (Monday, October 4)

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer shows that Democrats and Republicans intentionally wanted to create a student loan industry instead of generously funding colleges and universities, which eventually left millions of Americans drowning in student debt. Zoom, Monday, Oct. 4, 4:00 PM EDT.

Debt and Disillusionment

by Rebecca Gordon

"We know, in other words, that there are only a relatively small number of spaces in the cockpit of today’s economic plane. Nonetheless, we tell our young people that the guaranteed way to get one of those rare gigs at the top of the pyramid is a college education."

David Harvey and David Graeber Discuss "Debt" (Video)

Political theorists David Harvey and David Graeber discuss Graeber's book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2012. 

In Memory of David Graeber, Listen to A BBC Interview on the History of Debt

Anthropologist David Graeber, whose works included the influential book Debt: The First 5,000 Years has recently passed away. This 1996 BBC interview explores the terrain of that book and the significance of debt as a political force. 

In a highly indebted world, austerity is a permanent state of affairs

by Mark Blyth

Strip away all the electoral politics at the moment in the US, the UK, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, and there's one underlying question. It’s a creditor/debtor stand-off where the creditors have the whip hand.

Don Hickey: The U.S. defaulted on debt after War of 1812

Lessons from America's most forgotten war.

GOP Leaders are Playing Chicken with the American Economy

by Robert Brent Toplin

The illustrious House leadership of the Republican Party. Credit: Flickr/DonkeyHotey.In recent months the U.S. economy has been gaining strength. “Weekly Jobless Claims Plunge to 5-Year Low,” announced The Huffington Post. “Home Prices Hit a Milestone,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “Consumer Sentiment Rises,” announced the New York Times.Now that progress is endangered. Republicans have been acting like it’s a great time to drive the economy into a storm.

The Politics of Debt in America

by Steve Fraser

Image via Shutterstock.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com via Jacobin magazine.

Julian Zelizer: America Lives Under the Shadow of George W. Bush

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of "Jimmy Carter" and of "Governing America."Although some Democrats are pleased that taxes will now go up on the wealthiest Americans, the recent deal to avert the fiscal cliff entrenches, rather than dismantles, one of Bush's signature legacies -- income tax cuts. Ninety-nine percent of American households were protected from tax increases, aside from the expiration of the reduced rate for the payroll tax.In the final deal, Congress and President Barack Obama agreed to preserve most of the Bush tax cuts, including exemptions on the estate tax.When Bush started his term in 2001, many of his critics dismissed him as a lightweight, the son of a former president who won office as result of his family's political fortune and a controversial decision by the Supreme Court on the 2000 election.

When Was the Debt Ceiling Created?

by Bradley Craig

The debt ceiling initially allowed Congress to get around the fiscal uncertainty of paying for war.

We're All [Ancient] Greeks Now When It Comes to Debt

by Thad A. Titze

The Parthenon from the south. Credit: Wiki Commons.Following the Peloponnesian War, Athens’ interim government borrowed 100 talents ($37 million) from the victorious Spartans. Shortly thereafter, when Athens’ democratic government returned to power, it assumed the debt incurred by the interim government and repaid the Spartans in full. This story is noteworthy as it marks one of the first discernable instances of sovereign debt. The Athenians’ timely repayment, however, is anomalous in the long history of public borrowing. Default and renegotiation of public debt is a practice nearly as old and constant as public debt itself. As the spotlight of sovereign debt returns to the Greek people -- pioneers of public debt -- it is important to recognize that throughout history governments have rarely been careful stewards of borrowed money.

Thomas Jefferson's Radical Plan to Avert the Fiscal Cliff

by Dennis Gaffney

Those looking for guidance on how to chisel the federal debt today might re-examine how Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican party tackled the issue. Jefferson, who fought personal debt all his days, made the erasure of the federal debt his number one priority after his first election in 1800. He believed debt siphoned money from taxpayers by forcing them to pay interest, giving more funds -- and hence, power -- to bankers, who Jefferson deeply distrusted. The choice for Americans, Jefferson believed, was between “economy and liberty” and “profusion and servitude.”Jefferson understood that debt was necessary to pay for war and to invest in the public good, but he believed that “neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself, assembled can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time....” That was a generation, according to Jefferson, and his debt reduction plan, devised by his Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin, was to eliminate the debt he inherited in sixteen years.