Whenever I write about about either income inequality or basic income guarantee I usually get a comment how none of it will matter if we don’t help people get out from underneath debt first. I was also reminded of that recently when I heard how much interest some students are paying on their student debt. And I have started to read Debt: The First 5,000 Years which is fascinating. So here is an idea. What if there was a site for crowdsourcing debt relief in a lottery format. People contribute...

For a moment I thought it was a typo when I saw the headline “Survey Monkey Raises $800 Million in Debt and Equity.” Shouldn’t that be $80 million? No. What’s going on? Survey Monkey essentially just provided a massive private liquidity event to its investors and employers. And it did so while staying private. Why would someone want to do that? Here is what Dan Goldberg, Survey Monkey’s CEO and Sharyl Sandberg’s husband, said to Fortune:“There are lots of good reasons for going public,” says ...

Very short post as I am about to get on a plane to fly back from London to New York (and Virgin Atlantic does not yet have wifi on its flights). Reading the papers in London and talking to people it is clear that the European debt crisis is very much on everyone’s mind while we at home seem to be enthralled with either the latest startup valuations, or Rush Limbaugh and maybe the Republican Primary. Here the discussions are about Greece and Spain and the fact that the European Central Bank (E...

The debt showdown in Washington is supremely frustrating as it illustrates the complete inability of our current political system to deal with the structural changes that we are facing. At present course and speed things will get a lot worse before we can hope for them to get better. Trying to fix the budget without fixing the underlying problems in the economy and society is the proverbial attempt to prevent the sinking of the Titanic by rearranging the deck chairs. Here are several areas in...

And now for the third installment in my mini-series on debt. Up today: financial sector debt. If you thought that the charts on household debt and corporate debt were eye popping, then you better put on some dark shades before you continue reading. As I pointed out in a previous post on the demise of Lehman, leverage in the financial sector has vastly amplified risk. Lehman clearly is not alone here. The following chart shows the growth of debt in the financial sector together with the growth...