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Oct 14, 2023Liked by Ann Pettifor

A very clear explanation and sadly prediction. As a matter of detail I couldn’t relate the 269% and 286% total debt figures in the text on the related graph.

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David, Sincere apologies. Earlier in the piece I cite the Institute for International Finance: "In a higher-rate environment, the global debt stock rose by $10 trillion to a new record high of $307 trillion in H1 2023. " The IMF in contrast writes in its 2023 Global Debt Monitor: "Global debt declined 10 percentage points of GDP and reached 238 percent of GDP in 2022. In U.S. dollars, global debt remained stable at USD 235 trillion." I should have made that clear, and thank you for the prompt.

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David, Sincere apologies. I should have replied earlier, plus I should also have explalined the two sources for my numbers. Both the IMF and the Institute of International Finance (the bankers' think tank) produce data. According to the IIF: "In a higher-rate environment, the global debt stock rose by $10 trillion to a new record high of $307 trillion in H1 2023." The chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/file:///Users/annpettifor/Downloads/2023-09-2023-global-debt-monitor%20(2).pdf "In a higher-rate environment, the global debt stock rose by $10 trillion to a new record high of $307 trillion in H1 2023."....I had used the IIF numbers in the para, and then inserted the IMF chart.

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Is the point of 'greedflation' to stave-off apparent deflation and it's associated spiral by jacking- up prices, or to shore-up overinflated share prices now they are facing competition from bond re-sales by the RB's, or both, or neither? M3 trends in NZ suggest deflation arrives here between now and mid-2024.

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As we bump along in a normal process of keeping a complicated world in balance, I want to bring left field into the conversation. It's where we stop relying on regulations and laws that force behavior and turn to what keeps human consciousness in its dog eat dog perspective. That needs to change to get us on an even keel. With so much of humanity in survival now and so few having so much, it's vital to address that to alleviate that sharp split that threatens to tear us apart. We would be moved to do that if we adopted a new creation story. We're stuck in a Newtonian one that supports materialism and separation, where we need to see ourselves in a quantum world where we'd realize we are sacred beings. Then we'll operate as one humanity, creating what's best for us all. Watch this 3-minute animation that I found which brilliantly conveys the power of the story we tell about who we are and what we're doing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUEu4YT0ZSA.

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Sep 30, 2023·edited Sep 30, 2023

Well said and supported. Not to worry, finance is the ultimate expression of white priviledge. No matter how bad it gets monetary authority will be used to bailout serial sponsors of the political system.

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For a decade until my retirement in 2005, I tracked residential property markets for the U.S. GSE Fannie Mae. What I learned is that our property markets (and those in most other countries) are plagued by the hoarding of land and by land speculation. Economic theory confirms that the only real solution is to impose an annual tax on owners of land equal to the potential annual rental value of whatever land is held, ideally eliminated the burden of taxation on housing units. What is not discussed is the fact that while housing is a depreciating asset that requires continuous expenditures for maintenance and huge expenditures for systems replacement every decade or so, the value of land is (as every realtor tells us) based on the quality of the public goods and services in a given locality.

Absent the kind of property tax reform referred to above, the only strategy to be employed to increase the supply of permanently-affordable housing is for communities to put whatever land is held publicly into a land trust. Housing (whether for renter-occupancy or owner-occupancy) can then be constructed and leased or sold as prices set based on the household income of eligible households. To prevent unearned gains on any future sale of owner-occupied units, the selling price then needs to be set based on an appraisal (i.e., replacement cost, less depreciation).

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The levels of debt to gdp stated for 2007 and 2015 appear to be higher than the values shown in the graph for those years. Is that a consequence of the aggregation of the daily data to annualised data?

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