Public Debts and National Sovereignty from the 12th to the 21st Century

Following a series of crises of exceptional gravity, in 2008, the world economy entered a phase of high and growing indebtedness that fragilized its system on its financial grounds. On top of this, the dramatic prospects of the cost to fight climate deregulation will weight for at least two decades on our public finances. History shows that since the time the Italian city-states invented perpetual public debt to protect their monopoly over international trade, the world has been through long cycles of indebtedness and deleveraging. Through many experiences, developed countries have limited the cases of default on their debts, however defeated countries like Germany and Japan did not escape major failures. On the other hand, many emerging countries are more prone to default due to weak financial institutions and currencies.

What could we learn from these experiments for our current situation? One central point is that, without doubt, solidarity, and cooperation between all nations of the world to fight climate deregulation and to share the costs is necessary. The risks of fragmentation on these issues would be disastrous. The second central point is making large multinationals and very wealthy people take on a fair share of the burden, notably by eliminating tax heavens.