Larsson läser
Janerik Larsson
Janerik Larsson
New York Times rapporterar idag om hur skulderna ökar:
Debt plays an outsize role in creating boom-bust cycles across the world and through history. High debt increases the amplitude of economic swings. To think of it in terms of the corporate metaphor, high reliance on borrowed money may not affect a company’s level of output in theory, but makes it a great deal more vulnerable to bankruptcy.
That’s what makes a new report from McKinsey, the global consulting firm, sobering. Researchers compiled data on the full range of debt that countries owe — not just their governments, but corporations, banks and households as well. The results: Since the start of the global financial crisis at the end of 2007, the total debt worldwide has risen by $57 trillion, rising to 286 percent of global economic output from 269 percent.
Vad göra ?
If you accept our starting premise — that high debt, whether public or private, makes economies more vulnerable to economic shocks and tends to fuel booms and busts — the report offers plenty to worry about.
The McKinsey researchers propose a few policy changes that might reduce the inexorable shift toward greater debt or at least reduce its potential to throw economies into chaos. An example of the former: Reduce tax incentives for debt, such as the home mortgage interest tax deduction or the tax deductibility of corporate interest payments. An example of the latter: Create more ways for countries to restructure sovereign debt, such as clauses in newly issued bonds that compel bondholders to accept majority votes on restructurings.
But the solutions they offer are big policy changes that would happen only glacially. The reality that economic policy makers around the world must grapple with, especially those in China and Japan, is that eight years after a financial crisis brought on by high debt, we may not have learned as much as we would like to think we have.