‘Governments should spend no more than their tax income.’ Most people in Europe and North America accept this statement as simple common sense. It resonates with the deeply engrained economic metaphors that dominate public discourse, from ‘living within your means’ to ‘balancing the budget’ – all necessary, or so conventional wisdom holds, to avoid the dangers of debt, taxation and financial ruin. This book shows how these homely metaphors constitute the ‘debt delusion’: a set of plausible-sounding yet false ideas that have been used to justify damaging austerity policies. John Weeks debunks these myths, explaining the true story behind public spending, taxation, and debt, and their real function in the management of our economies. He demonstrates that disputes about public finances are not primarily technical matters best left to specialists and experts, as many politicians would have us believe, but rather fundamentally questions about our true political priorities. Requiring no prior economic knowledge, this is an ideal primer for anyone wishing to cut through the rhetoric and misinformation that dominate political debates on economics and become an informed citizen.

In the twenty-first century, corporations delude themselves that their operations are capitalist. In fact the high levels of debt, based on dubious assets reflect "debtism" not "capitalism". Over the ages, debt has crippled countries and economies, companies, large and small, because of biased optimism by lenders and borrowers. Debt is the most common global financial risk and needs to be controlled at Board level, even before trained executives endeavour risk management. The Debt Delusion provides a history of money and debt that should lead all Directors and executives to study recommended ways to manage debt. Management of debt will be extremely important in 2008.

Britain in 2011 is in the grip of debt hysteria. If the current coalition government is going to be remembered for one thing it is the cuts: the most severe that this country has seen for decades. Cuts to university funding, libraries and public sector workplaces have seen the most high profile resistance, with the type of protest on the streets not seen since the Poll Tax riots and the Thatcher years. In this ebook, Mehdi Hasan exposes ten myths about the debt, deficits and spending cuts, and asks if this programme of austerity is really necessary or whether it is actually an economic strategy with its roots in an ideology that extends much further back in time than the global economic collapse of 2008. BRAIN SHOTS is the pre-eminent source for high quality, short-form digital non-fiction. The Summer of Unrest series brings together stellar writers to explore the issues surrounding the austerity measures in the UK, uprisings in the Middle East and the nature of the protest movements springing up all over the world.