Stiglitz, Debt and Immigration. Quite a cocktail

In a world already on fire from Global Warming and dying of Covid-19, the news of a looming debt crisis is as welcome as a plague of locusts in a memorial garden. Yet such is the eminence of Joseph Stiglitz (Professor, Columbia; Nobel Memorial Prize; Chief Economist World Bank) that we just have to take him seriously. And how we wish we didn’t!

In an article penned with Hamid Rashid for the Guardian he describes a threat to world capital markets posed by a looming debt crisis. * Many of the world’s poorest nations are going to default on their loans quite soon, with all the implications that has for their economies. We leave the details to the good Professor, linked below, as he seems to know a lot about it.

The trouble with economic collapse is that people flee from it, looking to escape to better lives. However heartless it sounds, we at LSS think that people are like charged ions, moving from negative to positive along economic fields, towards money. That is what drives immigration. Many people are calling for ” reduced aid budgets, and for spending our money at home.” We can understand that. In our acquaintance, they are the same people who call most loudly for reduced immigration. So we ask them-wouldn’t spending a little to improve things in the poorest countries turn out to be a good long term investment?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/03/global-debt-crisis-relief-coronavirus-pandemic

#stiglitz #debtcrisis #capitalmarkets #restructuring #immigration #migration #refugee #aidbudget