Zoe Williams writes in the Guardian: “I’ve been going on protests since I was young but I’ve never chanted about interest rates or debt restructuring deals.”
(Ann Pettifor, another signatory, director of Policy Research in Macroeconomics,) counsels a balance in interests between debtors and creditors, but Molly Scott Cato, a green economist at the University of Roehampton, puts something else on the table, for which the international law already exists.
The notion of “odious debt” was invented in the 19th century (formalised in 1927): it stipulates that when a regime incurs debt that is not in the national interest, the successor to that regime can treat the debt as a personal burden of the outgoing despot, and write it off.
If it sounds archaic and unreasonable even to bring it up, bear in mind that America used this when it invaded Iraq, as a justification for taking over the oil rights and not honouring the debts left by Saddam Hussein.
So there are groups across Europe – Who Owes Whom? in Spain, and Not Our Debt in Ireland – making the case that state debt incurred by actions that nobody voted for, rescuing banks, for instance, whose policies nobody even knew about, should be written off, not (only) for moral reasons, but in accordance with international law.
“That’s the radical answer,” Scott Cato says, “to challenge where the debt comes from. Have a citizen’s audit.”
How do you like the sound of that, demonstrators?
“What do we want?”
“A citizen’s audit!”
“When do we want it?”
“To cover the tax period 31 March 2003 to 5 April 2007.”
