"Expansionary fiscal policy is taboo, because it threatens to increase national debt further. But much depends on how governments present their accounts. In 2014, the Bank of England held 24% of UK government debt. If we discount this, the UK’s debt/GDP ratio was 63%, not 92%.

"So it makes more sense to focus on debt net of government borrowing from the central bank. Governments should be ready to say that they have no intention of repaying the debt they owe their own bank. Monetary financing of government spending is one of those taboo ideas that is sure to gain support, if, as is likely, economic recovery grinds to a halt."

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Professor Lord Skidelsky! I disagree with much of the preamble (including the implication that Shakespeare intended Polonius' stream of adages to be taken seriously; I fancy Shakespeare's audiences would find being neither a borrower nor a lender—particularly the former—as ludicrously impractical as would today's precariat), but I love the conclusion.

Private mortgage debt is bad. Private credit card or loan shark debt (the categories are not exclusive) is very, very bad. Money the government owes itself is at worst a misleading artifact of an accounting convention, at best an indirect metric of public economic stimulus. It harms nobody but those loan sharks and assorted greater and lesser parasites who currently benefit from the neoliberal debtfare system; that's the only reason it's a taboo.