Newish Blog on the Block

An interesting Blog has come to my attention. It’s called The Debts of a Nation (‘dedicated to presenting finance and economics news in plain English’) HERE:

Its heading description is tantalising:

“In Debt We Trust

The Debts of a Nation is a modern revision of "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. Smith structured his arguments as a critique against the prevailing economic and political ideology of his time - namely mercantilism. Under mercantilism the colonial powers of Europe amassed enormous amounts of gold and silver wealth through strict control of exports and the wholesale looting of foreign shores. Their colonists were locked in a cycle of indebtedness with financiers in their home countries. Fast forward to the modern age. Not much has changed - except instead of specie wealth we have fiat based currencies based on overleveraged government bor[r]owing. Mercantilist trade imbalances still exist. Citizens continue to live under debt bondage. And Western governments continue to loot emerging markets. The next few years will be a time of unknown risks surfacing. The majority of market pundits continue to operate under the assumption that all known risks have been contained. They still believe that the system's parameters can sufficiently contain the world's credit problems. They still continue to believe in the debts of a nation.”

Comment
Briefly, as I am preparing for a visit to geological site today (the ‘non-conformity’ at Siccar Point, near Edinburgh, discovered and explained by James Hutton, 1726-1797, and a close friend of Adam Smith) and I will come back later to discuss The Debts of a Nation in more detail, which appears to parallel my general approach to what has changed/not changed since Adam Smith wrote Wealth Of Nations, as discussed on Lost Legacy.

Most prominently, we still live in a world dominated by mercantile political economy, jealousy of trade, wars not for defence, tariff and non-tariff protectionism, limited free trade, state-favoured business (made worse by Big Government), regulations beyond that necessary for good government, and constant tinkering in personal affairs, and the dominance of a legislative cycle that is shorter than the policy-effectiveness period need to prove the effectiveness or otherwise of the interventions.

The Debts of a Nation, on the basis of a rapid glance, looks serious. I shall test my first hasty impression later after my geological expedition.