1 - Introduction

Summary

This book arrives a decade after the Global Financial Crisis and the beginning of the Great Recession, at a time when much of the world still labours under problems vividly brought to light by these events. The starting point of this book is that there is now significant evidence to link pressing policy problems of economic stagnation, inequality and political discord to high levels of household debt. This realisation begins to build a case for debt relief. The opening chapter begins by establishing the centrality of household debt to contemporary financialised capitalism, while presenting empirical evidence of high household debt levels. The chapter focuses in particular on the distribution of household debt and the policy implications of the unequal sharing of the economy’s debt burden. It also explores the concept of mass household over-indebtedness, and the policy responses necessitated by the development of this phenomenon.