Who owes? Class struggle, inequality and the political economy of leverage in the twenty-first century

The prevalent consensus in critical social sciences is that finance articulates the world economy as a global hierarchy of creditor-debtor relations reproduce and further aggravate existing income wealth inequalities. Class struggle correspondingly understood conflict between elite creditors, who are members top 1% holders, mass debtors, burdened by growing costs servicing public private debts. This article offers an alternative understanding how debt, inequality class relate to one another. At its basis recognition over past four decades, has empowered upper borrowers, including 1%, it magnified their capacity generate capital gains capture greater shares via levered-up investments other forms positioning financial property markets. thus provides political leverage power, showing contemporary not given shape distributional creditors debtors two distinct classes, but instead set against namely borrowers lesser ones.