Mr Skidelsky is very picky about the half-truths he spells out. Picky in such a way that he miserably fails to name solutions for the glo0bal situation, but restricts the usefulness of his essay to the countries that have been historically rich and have been setting the rules, essentially enslaving the world.



Mr Skidelsky, comparing Greece with Japan, does not mention that Japan's debt to the tune of 60% of GDP is in its central bank balance sheet --he only parenthetically mentions BoJ. If Greece had an independent central bank and 60% of GDP worth of Greek debt was in the central bank's balance sheet, Greece would likely have lower interest rates than Japan, because it has far lower private debt to GDP.



Of course, he does not mention that there is no way for Greece to guide its government debt to domestic hands, because it is part of the EU. Further, because it is also part of the EZ, its banks have been advised (or instructed?) to diversify the government debt in their balance sheets, away of Greek debt and that is how they did not collapse when the ECB denied ordinary liquidity in the beginning of the 2015 negotiations (February, I believe). In fact, Greece being in the EZ is such a problem that Greek banks have to move away from Greek debt, and what debt pension funds and domestic population had at hand, in 2010, has taken a tremendous haircut, crippling any chance that domestic debt will be held domestically in the future!



Mr Skidelsky should also tell us how he picked Denmark to compare with the US, on private debt. It is amazing that he forgets to mention the tremendous inequality in the US, in stark contrast with Denmark. It is, of course, obvious that "the bottom quintile" will be more leveraged in the US, when half the wealth is at the hands of the 1% and (which must be near true for the US, if it is for the globe, of which it accounts for 22.5%). It is tremendously difficult to get leveraged for this 1% and, indeed, for the rest of the top 10% in the US.



In fact, the drivers of gigantic and increasing private and public debt globally, are in trade and investment deals, like those the US are putting forward (TPP and TTIP), in currency unions without matching fiscal and political authorities to recycle the benefits, and also in tax heaven regimes remaining untouched. Of course Mr Skydelsky won't tell us anything about these. They are sensible political issues, important to great vested interests.



Mr Skydelsky's ideas are very uninteresting. Only US and China can make use of them, because of their near self-sufficiency. The rest of the world depends on demand and free trade and investment zones are gradually killing it with over-indebtedness.