Economics

[Seeker]

This is a sketch from Clarke and Dawe (a Kiwi and an Ozzie) who do satirical interviews with each other, based on facts. This one is about financial lending between countries, particularly within Europe. It's quite funny until you realise it is based on fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5QwKEwo4Bc


I freely admit, I cannot get my head around world economics. If the USA has massive debt (22 Trillion dollars or $22,000,000,000,000 ) :eek:

and it borrows money from China, yet China has $5.8 trillion debt of its own. Where exactly is all this money coming from? Will all the world debt ever get paid off? Is a financial crash required to reset everything?

As far as I can tell, every country is in debt which has made my understanding recede still further.

[Adam Ef]

Money is no longer a tangible real thing. Some of that debt will be tied up in "futures" and hypothetical gains and losses somehwere down the line. The financial world is just a high level of gambling that people high up are earning money on. Money at that level is a totally different thing to people like us having money in our pocket to buy food etc. It's a totally abstract thing.

[Adam Ef]

That video is very good. Felt like I shouldn't have found it funny. What an absurd world we've created.