Some Long Range Consequences of the World Economic Crisis

It’s a sad day when a single company can cause world economic turmoil by downgrading the credit worthiness of the world’s only superpower. Standard & Poor’s, the same company that gave junk collateralized debt obligation a AAA rating to cause the current crisis, has downgraded the USA rating to a AA+, and the world goes along with it. This raises the question of whether or not the world has gone seriously off the rails.

How did we come to this point? How did the developed nations of the world become deeply indebted to an oligarchy of private financiers? How did the leading developed democratic nation in the world, the USA, become indebted to a developing authoritarian nation, China to the tune of several trillion dollars? The answer lies in letting wealth become concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy individuals and institutions and allowing a colluding central bank to create credit by simply making entries in its accounting journals.

The creation of credit and the abundant supply of cheap energy are the main ingredients that have lead to the rapid development of the developed nations in the  last several centuries. This has allowed the standard of living in these countries to advance way beyond that of undeveloped and developing countries. Accompanying this phenomena has been the emigration of labor from undeveloped to developing countries where this is possible.

But, advances in transportation and communication, and trade agreements in the last several decades, have allowed the free flow of goods and capital across international borders. This has directed the flow of private capital to countries with low production costs and away from developed countries. Businesses have become multinational, reducing the loyalty of their home countries and accelerating relocation to developing countries.

If international agreements were in place, this could have led to increasing the standard of living in developing countries to to the level of developed countries without reducing the standard of living in developed countries. But, instead, the way this has happened has been left mainly to private interests, resulting a decline of labor rates and employment, and increased debt, in developed countries while developing countries like China have become creditors. Instead of allowing the standard of living of  Chinese workers to rise to the level of developed countries, the Chinese government has accumulated the wealth from its development and used it to fund debt in the countries buying its products.

What remains to be seen is how this will all work out. In ancient times, wealth became concentrated in the hands of kings and their aristocratic cohort and debt in those outside the ruling circles. Periodically, there were Debt Jubilees, where debts would be forgiven and a new cycle of wealth and debt accumulation started. Since, in the modern world, wealth accumulates in private hands, and narrow private interests control government through contributions to politicians, there is no possibility of debt forgiveness.

All signs point to protecting wealthy private interests at the expense of working people. Eventually, debt service eats up all the resources that are needed to sustain productive enterprise and the system collapses. The question people should be asking is whether humans are smart enough to make corrections before the system collapses? The second ingredient of development, energy, may make the decision for us sooner rather than later. As fossil fuel resources decline and debt grows we face a double threat to the world economy and the standard of living of its citizens.