Introduction Over the last ten years Greece has been a prime example of how a country and a people can be deprived of their liberty through clearly illegitimate debt. Since the 19th century, from Latin America to China, Haiti, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire public debt has been used as a coercive force…
“If man will strike, strike through the mask!”Ahab, Moby Dick It was very gratifying to see Tucker Carlson’s recent attack on the activities of Paul Singer’s vulture fund, Elliot Associates, a group I first profiled four years ago. In many respects, it is truly remarkable that vulture funds like Singer’s escaped major media attention prior…
The year is 2007. The monsoon had just arrived in Mumbai and it was pouring cats and dogs. The windows of the Premier Padmini kaali-peeli I am in are stuck and don’t go up beyond a point. By the time I reach the Taj Mahal Hotel in Apollo Bunder, near the Gateway of India, my…
As that rail and subway strike continued to paralyze travel in Paris and across France into the third week, President Emmanuel Macron made a Christmas appeal to his dissatisfied countrymen: “Strike action is justifiable and protected by the constitution, but I think there are moments in a nation’s life when it is good to observe…
The world is now 188 trillion dollars in debt, and that number continues to grow rapidly each year. It is a form of enslavement that is deeply insidious, because most of those living on the planet do not even understand how the system works, and even if they did most of them would have absolutely…
Critics often claim that China is using its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a form of coercive “debt-trap diplomacy” to exert control over the countries that join its transnational infrastructure investment scheme. This risk, as Deborah Brautigam of John Hopkins University recently noted, is often exaggerated by the media. In fact, the BRI…
