Rather than mobilizing savings to fund new industries, the banking system that comprises the financial, insurance and real estate sectors merely loads the economy down with debt.
Economists predicted the fighting would last six months when World War I broke out in 1914. Wars were too expensive to be sustained, and the approaching fiscal cliffs would soon enough force the nations involved to negotiate a peace treaty. But they didn’t, because those governments simply printed more money, Michael Hudson writes in the first of a series at CounterPunch.