Debt

Debt is a liability on the balance sheet of one Agent is held as an asset on the balance sheet of another. Credit is a special case of debt, in which two agents expand their balance sheets by issuing one another off-setting debts that can later be cleared. To the extent that credit fails to clear, it leaves debt as a residue, which must either be rolled over or closed out with a transfer of real balances (outside money or collateral). In financial capitalism the growth in the forms of indebtedness is the condition and strategy for capital accumulation, just like expansion of labor force participation, was for expanding commodity production. Our collective capacity to assume debt and pay taxes and be the direct bearer of austerity measures create direct vehicles for financial asset accumulation. The increasing supply of government bonds is possible only through deficit cuts and excluding all inflationary spending. This is like the financial equivalent of raw material for industrial production. In financial economy the surplus is extracted more directly from this collective capacity to become more indebted and pay taxes than from the stagnating number of people employed in goods and services production.