[quadrangle]

I don't think your summary of why Debt was/is popular will hold up to scrutiny. If you investigate with an open mind why people appreciate the book, it won't be merely because it plays up anti-state and anti-biz, anti-bank tropes. There's tons of other books that do that which people do not find comparable insightful.

The emphasis of the myth of barter and the rest of the stuff about how debt works is interesting especially because it doesn't set out to make the story simpler. He makes the story far more complex and intriguing. It leaves people with the capacity to hold more lightly to our assumptions about the nature of money and power and the economy. None of these things should be taken as inevitable laws of society or something. We recognize that there are many different ways to think about these things. And the simple part is to stop thinking that we all know some supposedly obvious idea like "we must pay our debts" and to start wondering a lot more about all the complexity and presumptions that go into how debt fits into our relationships and situations.

I doubt you'll find readers of Debt who come away extra confident that they now know the answer to how things "really" work. Most readers probably feel more that they have a view of how much there might be out there to understand, and they are willing to be less overconfident and more questioning about it all.

[unmole]

Actually I don't completely disagree with your comment.

"The book asks big questions" would be a better discription than what I originally wrote. The book makes for excellent dinner table conversation.

But I stand by my assertion that it does not provide any new perspectives on economics that bear any resemblance to the real world. And if anything, it makes it difficult for the reader to understand the financial system because of its factual inaccuracies.

[quadrangle]

Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case.

The core of the book in my reading is not a description of the dominant financial system. I read it as a discussion of multiple factors that influence how debt can be used in a wide variety of ways in societies. And the parts that discussed our current financial arrangements might not be precise in all regards, but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric.

[unmole]

> Given that a decently large portion of the book discusses the anthropology of money and debt in a wide array of diverse cultures, the idea of lacking "resemblance to the real world" seems wrong to me. The real world includes all those different situations that are starkly different from the current dominant economic case.

Ignoring the quaint cultural practices of remote tribes does not diminish one's ability to understand the economics of the real world that they live in. Having an inaccurate picture of they actual system they live in on the other hand is far more damaging.

> but they were still more accurate by my understanding than the wrong-but-common concepts that are asserted by most naive citizens and used in most political rhetoric.

That is a rather low bar. But the book still has quite a few howlers:

- US treasury bonds are literally the safest securities on the planet. Graber calls them a debt that will never be paid.

- Graber claims that the global status of the dollar is maintained in large part by the fact that it is, again since 1971, the only currency used to buy and sell petroleum, glossing over the fact that the US dollar was the reserve currency since Bretton Woods. He then follows up with what can only be called a conspiracy theory, suggesting that the US invasion of Iraq was possibly motivated by Saddam Hussein's switch to the Euro.

- Graber likens the large holdings of US treasures by Western Europe, Japan and Korea to a tribute system which siphons wealth from these supposed client states to the American Empire. But when it comes to China holding vast quantities of the very same treasuries, he says from China's point of view, this is the first stage of a very long process of reducing the United States to something like a traditional Chinese client state.

[thoughtstheseus]

On your point about US treasury bonds… I don’t have the book in front of me but this is a common, colloquial saying among many of my peers in finance. No one wants the U.S. to pay all of its debt, the structure of the global economy today requires these debts to function. They’re basically cash equivalents.

Grabers comments on the dollar as an oil currency… I disagree with that. Still, many investors I know around his age would have said something similar 10-15 years ago. The U.S dollar as a reserve currency is America's greatest strength (maybe not greatest but it’s up there) and weakness. Anything that impedes the dollar as a global reserve currency is a significant risk to the U.S.

Grabers comments on Europe, Korea, China, etc. you mention- again not an unusual thing to say in my view. Debatable certainly, but not obviously wrong.

[unmole]

> No one wants the U.S. to pay all of its debt, the structure of the global economy today requires these debts to function. They’re basically cash equivalents.

That is an entirely valid point. But that is not what Graber is alluding to:

> American imperial power is based on a debt that will never-can never-be repaid. Its national debt has become a promise, not just to its own people, but to the nations of the entire world, that everyone knows will not be kept.

They are cash equivalents exactly because nobody believes the US will default. Basically, the exact opposite of what Graber is saying.

> The U.S dollar as a reserve currency is America's greatest strength (maybe not greatest but it’s up there) and weakness.

People keep saying that but I am yet to hear a compelling explanation of the tangible benefits the US actually derives from this arrangement. Graber points to seigniorage or tribute as he likes to call it. Ben Bernanke, obviously not a neutral source, claimed in 2016 that this is on the order of $20 billion a year[0]. The highest, albeit unsourced claim I could find puts it around $100 billion[1]. Either way, in the larger scheme of things, it is chump change.

> Anything that impedes the dollar as a global reserve currency is a significant risk to the U.S.

Even assuming that is true, it's hard to link it to the invasion of Iraq. Iraq started selling oil for Euros in 2000. This wasn't some rouge act of defiance, the switch happened under the aegis of the UN's food-for-oil program. If it actually was a significant risk, the US could have simply vetoed it at the Security Council.

> Grabers comments on Europe, Korea, China, etc. you mention- again not an unusual thing to say in my view. Debatable certainly, but not obviously wrong.

So, is a foreign county holding huge reserves of US treasuries a) The act of a vassal paying tribute to the US or b) The machination of a rival intended to turn the US into a client state? Certainly, they both can't be true.

[thoughtstheseus]

Sounds like we agree. The points from Davids book are worthy of discussion.