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Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility, by Robert Kuttner
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One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government—“austerity”—is the solution to a persisting economic crisis like ours or Europe’s, now in its fifth year.
Since the collapse of September 2008, the conversation about economic recovery has centered on the question of debt: whether we have too much of it, whose debt to forgive, and how to cut the deficit. These questions dominated the sound bites of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the fiscal-cliff debates, and the perverse policies of the European Union.
Robert Kuttner makes the most powerful argument to date that these are the wrong questions and that austerity is the wrong answer. Blending economics with historical contrasts of effective debt relief and punitive debt enforcement, he makes clear that universal belt-tightening, as a prescription for recession, defies economic logic. And while the public debt gets most of the attention, it is private debts that crashed the economy and are sandbagging the recovery—mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing to make up for lagging wages, speculative shortfalls incurred by banks. As Kuttner observes, corporations get to use bankruptcy to walk away from debts. Homeowners and small nations don’t. Thus, we need more public borrowing and investment to revive a depressed economy, and more forgiveness and reform of the overhang of past debts.
In making his case, Kuttner uncovers the double standards in the politics of debt, from Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe’s campaign for debt forgiveness in the seventeenth century to the two world wars and Bretton Woods. Just as debtors’ prisons once prevented individuals from surmounting their debts and resuming productive life, austerity measures shackle, rather than restore, economic growth—as the weight of past debt crushes the economy’s future potential. Above all, Kuttner shows how austerity serves only the interest of creditors—the very bankers and financial elites whose actions precipitated the collapse. Lucid, authoritative, provocative—a book that will shape the economic conversation and the search for new solutions.
- Sales Rank: #803831 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-04-30
- Released on: 2013-04-30
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Booklist
Kuttner, entrepreneur, editor, and columnist, declares, “Today, in the aftermath of collapse, we need . . . more public borrowing to jump-start a depressed private economy.” Yet our current public debate has been about less public investment, not more, and the author laments the widely held view that “in a deep slump the main goal of fiscal policy should be austerity.” The author sets out to address the current crisis and the history of debt and debt relief, hoping to bring clarity to the dynamics of austerity and the debates about historical debt relief and to consider alternatives. To move forward, Kuttner offers his basic principles, including, in the U.S., reducing principal and refinancing underwater mortgages, restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, and breaking up the largest banks. In Europe, he recommends moving from austerity to debt relief and new investment by giving the European Central Bank the U.S. Federal Reserve’s powers and then acting on them. This timely, thought-provoking book will add valuable insight to ongoing fiscal-policy debates. --Mary Whaley
Review
"A highly readable, thought provoking analysis of America's—and the world's—situation, a unique blend of history, economics, and politics that shows a clear way out of our morass, if only our politics would 'allow us to get from here to there.' Kuttner explains why we don't have to be doomed to a generation of depression, but that current debt, finance, and austerity policies make that a likely prospect. Even those who disagree with his conclusions will find his wealth of historical insights invaluable."
—Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of The Price of Inequality
“Robert Kuttner has a gift for clear and forceful explanations of the complex dealings that brought the economy to its knees. Debtors’ Prison takes an innovative approach to economic history, using the lens of credit and debt to explore past boom-and-bust cycles and to illuminate the central issues in current economic debates. Kuttner’s impressive history also catapults the reader into the future, providing critical insight on strengthening the financial system. A must-read for anyone interested in our economic future.”
—Senator Elizabeth Warren
“[T]imely . . . take[s] readers on a historical tour of indebtedness, starting in 1692 with Daniel Defoe and ending with the recent recession and according to Kuttner, the misguided austerity regimes that sprang up in response . . . Kuttner draws thorough comparisons among the Depression, World War II, and present day fiscal engineering . . . An insightful and relevant look at the topic of debt in the United States and abroad.”
—Susan Hurst, Library Journal
“[C]ontributes a much-needed historical perspective that explores, as Kuttner puts it, ‘how the bad economic advice of the austerity lobby became the prevailing view.’ . . . arrive[s] at an opportune time . . . [Kuttner] hold[s] out the possibility of a different future.”
—Meg Jacobs, Democracy
“This timely, thought-provoking book will add valuable insight to ongoing fiscal policy debates.”
—Mary Whaley, Booklist
“Kuttner (The Squandering of America), cofounder and co-editor of the American Prospect, pulls no punches in his latest full-throated defense of Keynesian economics and repudiation of the modern neoliberal system . . . Kuttner’s deft overview of economic history—most notably his coverage of the Marshall Plan—demonstrates that economic stimulus can be very effective at ending recessions.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Debtors’ Prison is more than a devastating brief against the trans-Atlantic pursuit of austerity. It is a magisterial retelling of our history through the prism of the struggle over credit and debt. Navigating between countries and eras with the authority of a scholar and the narrative skill of a journalist, Robert Kuttner has written the authoritative guide to economic recovery and financial reform.”
—Jacob S. Hacker, co-Author of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
“Robert Kuttner nails the missing piece in Barack Obama’s presidency—the reason the American economy is still stalled and sickly. Read this book, then send it to the White House. Kuttner has the plan. The president needs to see it.”
—William Greider, author of Come Home, America
“No topics in modern political life have spawned more confusion, misdirected effort, and overall malarkey than ‘deficits’ and ‘debt.’ Robert Kuttner does us the enormous service of explaining which kinds of debt we should worry more about, and which kinds less—and how to manage public and private debt so as to sustain an age of broadly shared prosperity rather than of austere decline.”
—James Fallows, author of China Airborne
“[I]nformed, passionate, at times angry . . . The breadth of Kuttner’s review of the politics of credit and debt through American history is impressive.”
—Mark Levinson, Dissent
About the Author
Robert Kuttner is cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a research and policy center. He is a visiting professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. He was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe, The New York Times Global Edition, and The Huffington Post. This is his tenth book.
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Good Background, Objectively Derived
By Loyd Eskildson
Author Kuttner contends that our overall perspectives on debt have now become impediments to economic revival. The alleged benefits of fiscal discipline to business confidence will not materialize because businesses will hesitate to invest in the resulting depressed economy. Moral claims keep getting conflated with practical economic questions, and our debates focus obsessively on the wrong debts - public, instead of private (student debt, underwater mortgages). Further, he points out that rising public deficits did not cause the recent financial collapse, rather the collapse caused the higher deficits. Reality - private debt caused the crash and prolongs its aftermath. Our children's prospects depend on whether the economy can product better job opportunities and less private debt in the immediate future, not on eg. projected finances for Social Security a decade from now.
Kuttner also sees double standards in our attitudes towards debt relief - corporations are allowed to shed pension plans, bankers get bailed out in their role as debtors while protected as creditors, and bankers usually are also in line ahead of pensioners in a bankruptcy. After 9/11 we increased military spending by over $3 trillion in the space of a decade - that was OK, but not spending a similar amount reviving our infrastructure. Meanwhile, today's retirees can't get decent returns on their savings because central banks have cut interest rates to historic lows to prevent the crisis from deepening. (Banks want cheap money for themselves, draconian terms for everyone else.)
The last great financial collapse was ended not by belt-tightening but rather by public investments post WWII like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan, coupled with pent-up demand caused by rationing. Banks were well-regulated, and parasitic profits from financial manipulation was insignificant. Some exotic financial devices hadn't been invented yet, and most that had been devised were prohibited by New Deal reforms. Salaries in finance were relatively modest, except in investment banking where partners put their own capital at risk and did not expect to be bailed out. Chastened by the catastrophe of reparations extracted from Germany after WWI, nearly all Nazi-Germany debt was written off. The U.S. debt ratio rose between 2001 and 2008 because of two wars and gratuitous tax cuts for the wealthy, not an excess of social generosity. The deficit then spiked mainly because of a falloff in government revenues as a result of the recession. At the same time, declining real wages and inflated asset prices led the middle class to use debt as a substitute for income.
Prior to the Great Depression, 'Finance Capitalism' was predominant in an era characterized by small government, little regulation of banking and finance, and growing income and wealth inequalities. The consequence - an economy much more financially unstable that recorded numerous and prolonged economic contractions.
Beginning in the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank promoted what has become known as the Washington Consensus - developing nations needed to have tight fiscal policies, keep their exchange rates and labor costs competitive, privatize state ventures, reduce or eliminate subsidies, and open their financial markets to foreign capital flows. Two decades of intermittent crises brought the IMF to admit that this one-size-fits-all guidance often worsened recessions. Simultaneously, several major developing nations (Japan, South Korea, Brazil, China) attained very high levels of growth by rejecting key tenets of the Washington Consensus. They incubated and protected their industries, relied on government-business cartels, limited speculative money flows, and negotiated advantageous terms on which foreign suppliers and investors could participate. Taiwan built its dominance in microelectronics exports with a government industrial policy and subsidies. Beijing manipulates its currency to keep it undervalued to promote exports, and the U.S.-China Trade Commission estimates that half of China's industry is still owned by the state, directly or indirectly, and most of the rest is subject to mercantilist rules favoring Chinese-owned companies.
Washington promotes free-market capitalism through the IMF, WTO, OECD, and its own diplomacy, but indulges China's lapses. Why? You don't mess with your largest creditor - China held $1.16 trillion in U.S. Treasuries as of 6/2012, and almost half our foreign debt is owed China. Borrowing from abroad allowed the U.S. to outspend its national income between 2000 and 2008 by $4.3 trillion - most financed chronic trade deficits. Our chronic trade deficits are a mark of our falling economic performance and will eventually translate into reduced living standards, especially when interest rates rise to more normal levels.
'Countries don't go out of business' observed Citibank chairman Walter Wriston in 1982. But they frequently default - at least 250 times since 1800 according to one compilation. Often these were caused by adherence to the Washington Consensus, then those losing money in such loans bailed out by the Federal Reserve.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Hope for tomorrow
By R. Golen
This is a very hopeful book. It rightly points out that we were able to recover quickly from WWII. By we I mean everybody. Germany, for God's sake, recovered nicely in the 50's. Who would have thought? So if we can recover from the great depression/ WWII, the future is not hopeless. Here's a quote from the book that boils it all down:
Sooner or later (later unless we drastically revise prevailing assumptions and policies), recovery will occur. And at that point, the Fed will indeed allow rates to rise. Investors locked into low-rate long-term bonds of the Bernanke era will share the same fate as their counterparts in the 1950s and 1960s: they will have negative real rates of return. But there are worse things than a period of negative real interest rates. One is a prolonged depression. A key question today is whether gradual liquidation of government debt using the several strategies of repressing finance is better than the alternative of prolonged economic suffering. Though the rentier class paid a hidden tax in the decades after World War II, the real economy thrived: and, on balance, the rising tide soon lifted even the yachts.
I find this outlook very refreshing. We cannot forget that just 60 years ago we solved the economic/debt mess left by the depression/WWII. If we could handle that, we surely can emulate what happened in the late 40's, 50's and early 60's (the heydays of equitable prosperity) and take actions to bring wide-spread prosperity to the twenty-first century.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Debtors' Prison is the Perfect Metaphor for Current Rightous Fiscal Policy
By jem
Debtors' Prison is a perfect metaphor for morally righteous financial policy that imposes punitive fiscal actions. This is a courageous book from an economist who is able to explain causes and results of the recent US and European fiscal crises. It is divided into three major parts: the US economic crises that developed in 2007, the current European euro crisis, and a history of US fiscal policy from the Revolutionary War to the present day.
Modern day individuals, financial institutions, and governments are generally united in recognizing the futility of debtors' prisons as a means of forcing persons without access to employment to repay their debts. This book's comparison of the harsh reparation terms imposed after World War I which led to the rise of the Nazi party with the benevolence of the Marshall plan after World War II which led to European renewal is ample evidence that assistance in recovery trumps vengeance. But the US and Europe are both currently choosing morally righteous fiscal policies that are impeding economic recovery.
Kuttner is an economist in the Keyesianism tradition who does not hesitate to identify those he considers the villains. He lauds the FHA and FNMA established during the Great Depression for creating the long-term, fixed rate, self-amortizing mortgage system we now take for granted. But in 1968 FNMA (Federal National Mortgage Association) was privatized as the for-profit Fannie Mae and we all know how that turned out. It began a series of legal actions benefiting speculators over consumers. In his words, "What killed a highly effective home loan systems was a combination of random circumstance, bad economic theory, shifts in the distribution of political power, and financial innovations from hell."
This is the clearest, most straightforward description of our government's past and present failure to create and regulate a secure and fair national financial system. It is definitely a must read.
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