Razmig Keucheyan — The French are right: tear up public debt – most of it is illegitimate anyway

Tax reductions for the wealthy and interest rates increases are political decisions. What the audit shows is that public deficits do not just grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes, to legitimise austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.... 

An illegitimate debt is one that grew in the service of private interests, and not the wellbeing of the people. Therefore the French people have a right to demand a moratorium on the payment of the debt, and the cancellation of at least part of it. There is precedent for this: in 2008 Ecuador declared 70% of its debt illegitimate.

The nascent global movement for debt audits may well contain the seeds of a new internationalism – an internationalism for today – in the working classes throughout the world. This is, among other things, a consequence of financialisation. Thus debt audits might provide a fertile ground for renewed forms of international mobilisations and solidarity.

The neoliberal game plan to shrink government so it can be drowned in the bathtub (Grover Norquist) is to cut taxes and "pay for" social spending with deficits ("borrowed money", and then claim that government is bankrupt and can no longer afford to "pay for" social services, so that welfare programs like retirement guarantees, pubic health, and family assistance must be pruned to the core or privatized for "greater cost-saving from increased efficiency." Now that argument is being caught out, but unfortunately not yet on grounds in paradigm with MMT.

The Guardian (UK)
The French are right: tear up public debt – most of it is illegitimate anyway
Razmig Keucheyan
(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)