No debt without credit
Sir: Liam Halligan and William Galston set out, convincingly, all the causes and effects of the 2008 crash, painting a doom-laden picture of the future of the world (‘The world the crash made’, 8 September). Not once do they mention China, which has to be the beneficiary of the consequential increase in global debt. Neither mentions that for every debtor there is a creditor.
When I first worked in the financial world many years ago, the US was the world’s biggest creditor, Glass Steagall reigned supreme and, with growth slow but steady, everything seemed under control. But the Big Bang and Clinton’s repeal of GS opened the floodgates, allowing personal greed to determine the operation of the financial system. As a result of all this, certainly the rich in the West have grown even richer and the poor even poorer — but much more significantly, China has been allowed to acquire global hegemony without even firing a shot.
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