The heterodox economists have been warning about private debt for a long time. This is a profound and complex issue that spans thousands of years, but at the moment it might be worthwhile to simply contemplate the state of consciousness that arises from institutionalized interest-bearing debt as a social engine. Now, what has been fitted into place as a social motivation for collective activity is a mass desire to acquire much more than is put in, as a matter of course, as a matter of daily function.
Because each is on their own, and nobody is there to help, so enough resources must be taken in to get clear of that grinding killing floor of universal exploitation.
Part of the establishment response to the crisis consists of preserving this consciousness, this way of being, which accounts for the dogged reliance on huge bailouts for the wealthy and the well-connected, and scraps for everyone else, even in the face of massive destabilization and calamity.
To do things differently in a great enough amount threatens a mass mimetic response, which can cascade and cause lasting changes to the social order.
So you see bankers, managers, executives and investors nervously eyeing their assets and balance sheets, and clamoring for handouts and reassurances, and goading everyone down the line into maintaining capital and income flows, going so far as to claw at measly stimulus checks coming in.
And from reports I've seen and anecdotal accounts I've heard, many landlords and creditors are expecting full payment of back rent and suspended lease payments. Of course things will have to change as complications arise from the crisis, and we'll see various compensatory mechanisms put in place.
But just consider how long so much of the economy has been frozen, and how many people are out of work, and how many payments have been suspended or rendered unpayable. We're talking an enormous amount of suspended value, hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles, which when the gears start turning again, will come due and expected, and come crashing down. And this is on top of the sorry state of the credit system, and the massive sprawls of destroyed middle class wealth, and extreme precarity for a majority of individuals in the industrial world.
So as I've mentioned before, we'll have to see some pretty profound change in our political economy in the coming decade. That, or as Pink Floyd put it so vividly and succinctly, we'll be "dragged down by the stone."
