Lecture
Q&A
‘Between Debt and the Devil’ explains why debt is like pollution. Just as unregulated factories produce much pollution – since they benefit from increased production while someone else is left to clean up the mess – so, too, would banks issue as much debt as possible if left to their own devices. Adair Turner demolishes the arguments behind deregulating the financial industry, showing that most credit is not needed for economic growth, but rather drives real estate booms and busts, and leads to financial crises and depression. Public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. And while experts worry about fiat money – the erroneous notion that printing money leads to harmful inflation, Adair Turner shows how the long-term effects of governments taking on outsized private debts can be far more harmful to economies.