Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order




Paper Promises: Debt, Money, and the New World Order by Philip Coggan is timely, informative, clearly written, and utterly depressing.  Coggan takes us through the history of money, credit, debt, illustrating the various ways people give credit and take on debt, and how this dynamic has changed with history, location, and circumstance.

The New World Order in the subtitle is just that: we are on the verge of a debt cataclysm, probably to be enacted in stages, and from this will develop a new monetary system.  It will be just as radical a change as after the Great Depression, or World War II and Bretton Woods; it will most likely benefit China, the world's largest creditor.

The sky will not fall down (at least forever), people will still buy and sell, establish credit and take on debt, but America’s preeminent role as the world’s largest economy and most stable monetary system will be gone, according to Coggan.  The system will fail as most do: the very dynamics that made us wealthy, paper money no longer pinned to a gold standard, will cause it to collapse. The wealth we easily gained will cause from printing money will cause the system to devolve. 

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