The Debt Threat - Noreena Hertz

Economics has always appealed to not only my intellectual side but my artistic senses as well. Well, I am not a PhD intellectual or anything, and neither is my artistic side heightened to the levels of Picasso. But I still enjoy any book or article or discourse which might have leanings on either the brainy side, or the aesthetic side. And economics for me spreads on both sides of the spectrum. Debt is one among the many financial and economic creations of mankind, which by its very nature is a piece of art really, and requires a mammoth intelligence to understand fully its ramifications.

And Noreena Hertz explores the threatening implications that international debt has in her book. Even if one is not aware of the global economics, you don’t even have to be a whiz to guess what the term “debt threat” might imply. It is very easy to dismiss the book as one more alarmist piece of literature… like global warming or something else.

But I would beg to differ. For one, the author is aware that she might be regarded as a pessimist and an alarmist when she lists the evilness of debts. Secondly the book is not just about how debt is killing a horde of people in poor countries. It is a complete piece of research on how the whole cycle of debt became vicious in nature, how are the countries suffering because of that, what are the outcomes, and the remedies as well. It is a complicated issue, one does realize. And as Bono (yeah, the U2 rockstar) succinctly puts it, the author does do a commendable job on cutting out the acronyms and making this whole issue a lot more understandable for the non-economists but at the same time are concerned about the well being of the world.

The examples in this book seem to be very repetitive. It is one country after another, suffering under the weight of debt their governments has taken. Some dictatorships have taken debts just to lead a comfortable life for themselves, some governments have taken debts to make weapons, some to destroy forests in an attempt to save the economy, and some simply to service older debts. And these examples take the book perilously close to that dreaded “alarmist” tag. But those examples are just to strengthen the point that the author is trying to make. And while perhaps slightly overused, they are not out of place and definitely not unneeded.

The high point of the book is that the author gives a practical way out. Now, as I said, I am no PhD to really say whether her ways are practical. But as a normal civilian, I find the thought process and the logic sound. And as the author herself says, what she has given in the book is a blueprint, a suggestion at a high-level which needs to be refined and chiseled at to come out with policies to thwart the debt threat.
Having said that, though the book speaks about a topic which everyone should know of which itself would go a long way to mobilize public opinion, the book might be a bit heavy for absolutely everyone to read. Maybe if there could be a series of articles in the newspaper… or some other marketing ploy which would increase the target audience manifold would help. While not everyone might have an appetite for books, a newspaper article might be up for grabs. And the more the people are aware of this issue, the better