Thread by @ProgIntl

BREAKING: While the World Bank & IMF hosted their Spring Meetings, a new international collective — including @ingridharvold, @Jayati1609, and @KatharinaPistor — was preparing a blueprint for Debt Justice.

Today is the launch of that blueprint.

A 🧵:

progressive.international/blueprint/6061…

2/ We begin from a simple premise: We live now in a world of debt.

In the US, household debt tops $14tn, more than 3x the combined economies of South America.

In the Global South, meanwhile, private-sector debt has doubled in the last decade — and quintupled since 1970.

3/ All that was before Covid-19. The pandemic has since amplified the global debt wave into a virtual “tsunami”.

In the first nine months of 2020 alone, governments and companies worldwide took on $15 trillion of additional borrowing — $5 trillion more than during all of 2019.

4/ But the true significance of COVID-19 is not that it added another few trillions to the debt pile.

Instead, the pandemic marks a critical juncture in the debt justice movement.

5/ Debt is the main mechanism by which we meet consumption or investment needs when we don’t have the required cash at hand.

At most times and in most places, however, the debt relationship is unequal one, subjugating the debtor to the coercive power of the creditor.

6/ It is helpful to think of the global financial system as a hierarchy that redistributes wealth from the periphery of the global economy upward to its core.

7/ At the core of the system, a handful of states & firms reap enormous gains from their unmatched ability to borrow.

Indeed, the most predatory actors in the financial system have fared best: 2020 was the most profitable year for hedge funds in a decade.

8/ But Global South countries must borrow in foreign currency, with higher interest rates and higher risk of capital flight.

When crisis does hit, they are often forced into “structural adjustment” programs that sell out their public industries and slash their public spending.

9/ All of these disparate dynamics are manifestations of the same basic mechanism at the heart of the global financial system: the endless cycle of privatized gains and socialized losses.

Rich get rich. Poor, by design, remain poor.

10/ The goal of this working group is to end that cycle.

We are under no illusions regarding the enormity of that goal. Debt runs deep in the bloodstream of the global economy. The delivery of debt justice will require nothing short of its wholesale transformation.

11/ It is in that spirit that we have convened this collection: to develop a blueprint of debt justice — a map of where we go from here, and how movements around the world can combine forces to get there. progressive.international/blueprint/6061…

12/ Over the coming weeks, we will publish a series of essays that tackle the different dimensions of debt, confront policy questions with progressive principles, and build a common vocabulary for the struggle of debt justice.

13/ The first section of this blueprint — "Debt as Power" — is out today: a set of incisive interventions about the meaning of debt in the global economy today.

14/ First up: Joan Chaker (@chjoane) on "Debt as Colonialism."

"Governments are forced to enter into debt. Creditors profit from these debts. In turn, they lobby for laws and regulations in their favor. The people lose at every turn."

progressive.international/blueprint/ed7d…

15/ Next is Nicholas Loubere (@NDLoubere) on "Debt as Surveillance."

"We are not a number. If credit-worthiness is a sign of morality and good citizenship, what does it imply for those invisible to the state?"

progressive.international/blueprint/05b4…

16/ Osama Diab takes on "Debt as Exploitation," looking at the case of Egypt in particular.

"If Egypt’s story is tragic, it is because it illustrates a global dynamic in the debt system that is rigged for the rich and against the rest."

progressive.international/blueprint/0a00…

17/ And to finish the section, Christy Thornton (@llchristyll) & Philip Mader (@IDS_UK) flip the formulation on its head, showing how debt is a source of collective power.

"Debtors of the world can unite, and default."
progressive.international/blueprint/c758…

18/ In the days to come, we will go live with the two final sections — "A Vision of Debt Justice" on the principles that must guide this movement, and "The Debt Justice Agenda" on its concrete policies.

Sign up on the @ProgIntl site to stay updated:

progressive.international

END/ This collection is the product of the conviction, commitment, and generosity of its many contributors — long zooms and longer email chains traded across oceans and between time zones.

The global debt just movement is rising. Join us.

progressive.international/blueprint/6061…