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Achieving debt-free public higher education is an important goal for society as a whole and the left in particular. Education is a human right, and anyone who is willing and able should be able to attend an institution of higher education irrespective of their ability to pay for it. Public disinvestment in education needs to be challenged, because changing the very nature of higher education and exacerbating inequality even further is more than a budgetary matter.

At the height of the Washington feeding frenzy about the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, and sequestration, austerity hawks coined a new label to denigrate lawmakers who were opposed to cutbacks brought on by the cynical manipulation of national debt: "debt deniers." It was a savvy way of turning the tables on those who had gotten traction out of depicting the GOP as hopelessly afflicted by "climate denial." This past year finally saw the climate change threat acknowledged by the worlds leading international finance institutions. Both the IMF and the World Bank have acknowledged that the brunt of the impact will be borne by some of the poorest populations in the world, further jeopardizing their prospects for sustainable development. But neither institution has encouraged, let alone pressed, rich nations to pay climate debts to developing countries that have already felt the effects of climate change. Adapted from the source document.

At the height of the Washington feeding frenzy about the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling, and sequestration, austerity hawks coined a new label to denigrate lawmakers who were opposed to cutbacks brought on by the cynical manipulation of national debt: "debt deniers." It was a savvy way of turning the tables on those who had gotten traction out of depicting the GOP as hopelessly affl icted by "climate denial." Not that there was any real equivalence between the two charges. After all, economics, unlike climatology, is not a science, and there is nothing approaching a consensus about the fiscal wisdom of running large government debts, especially if they are U.S. debts, backed by the still almighty dollar.

Research Highlights and Abstract This article provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of UK debt. makes a contribution to the debate on the Anglo-liberal growth model and its consequences for the recovery of the UK economy. The UK has the highest private debt among the G7 states plus Spain. Both financial services and household debt are high. Financial services debt is much the more consequential of the two sectors. It was a central component of the growth model of the UK prior to 2008 and its legacy is making the UK's recovery from recession extremely difficult. Financial sector debt also had an impact on the UK's rising borrowing requirement from 2007. However, it was not the direct cause of the rise in the UK's budget deficit, which was in large part a product of the Brown government's approach to its political difficulties as growth came to an end. Despite the UK's high budget deficit in comparative terms, the UK has enjoyed considerable fiscal autonomy the past few years. However, this autonomy could yet be threatened by the ongoing consequences of financial sector debt.

The current student debt burden is an unsustainable outcome of the government's abdication of responsibility to secure access to higher education. Andrew Ross analyses the factors behind the funding crisis and suggests some ways to reestablish an affordable education system.

Because they have failed to address the fundamental economic imbalances within Europe obscured by the single currency, each effort by European leaders so far to resolve the euro crisis has only deepened it. Without a decisive move toward fiscal and political union, accompanied by policies that push productivity and competitiveness toward convergence while closing the democratic deficit, the Eurozone will disintegrate.To discuss the way forward, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe met in Rome on May 28 with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. In this section we publish the contributions from that meeting by the former European leaders, scholars and Nobel laureates who are members of the Council.

AbstractUK water debt has increased rapidly and has become a significant management issue for most water companies, constraining investment in necessary environmental interventions. Debt is characterised as debt penetration (percentage of customers in debt) and debt intensity (average size of debt per indebted customer). Actual debt characteristics in a water company can be plotted by intensity and penetration to demonstrate performance differences between companies, changes over time and performance relative to national norms. Using the relationships between debt and deprivation, the expected debt performance can be plotted. Using the expected position as a benchmark, the company performance can be evaluated and the remedial strategies can be targeted (if required) towards reduction of frequency and size of debt. The distance between actual and expected values is used as a metric of the requirement for additional debt management investment. Examples of these debtor plots for a range of anonymous companies are presented.