DEBT episode 1: Debt, a great invention

Nach dem vorherrschenden Verständnis ist Geld vor allem eine sehr individualistische Sache. Doch wenn wir es als öffentliche Infrastruktur verstehen, bekommen wir auch ein anderes Bild von uns Menschen und unserem Zusammenleben. Ein Beitrag von Jakob Feinig.

This short video visualizes the destabilizing effects financial markets can have on food prices, based on a paper by Jayati Ghosh. It introduces and explains the idea of future contracts and how those are used to speculate with basic food stuffs. After establishing the concepts, the video sketches out how the increase in those practices resulted in a substantial rise and later collapse of food prices around 2008 with severe consequences for many developing countries and their people.

The piece describes some of the effects that Nixon's decision to delink the dollar from gold in the 1970s had for the relationship between the IMF and its member states. A focus is on the negative effects of this change on societies in the Global South.

In March 2020, the Reserve Bank Board introduced a target for the yield on the three-year Australian Government bond which was discontinued in November 2021. This review examines the experience with the yield target and draws lessons from this experience.