Debt's History, Implications and Critical Perspectives

by David Graeber

Thu, May 17, 2012 2:53PM

"Gamal Mubarak, who used to work for Bank of America, decided he wanted to move away from the old welfare state model to a microcredit development model; since no one had any collateral to repossess, the police then became the guys who showed up to break your legs. Hence the universal outrage over police brutality."

"What we learned in 2008 is that everything they told us about markets was a lie. Markets don’t run themselves, and debts don’t always have to be paid. If we’re talking about the real big players, the rules are different, even 13 trillion in gambling debts (by some estimations) can be made to disappear. We can’t deny that money is at core a political phenomenon, not an economic one—or at the very least, that it has now become so. But if that’s the case, then if democracy is to mean anything, it has to mean that it’s not just the richest 1% of the population that gets to decide who had to keep the exact letter of their promises and whose promises can be scotched or renegotiated…but everyone."

to read the interview with David Graeber, author, anarchist and former Yale professor, click on

http://imaginenoborders.org/blog/alex/graeber-debt/

For more information: http://www.freembtranslations.net

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