Metastasis – Debt in Every Organ
Once a tool for investment, debt has become the life-support system of a decaying economy. Like cancer cells infiltrating organs, debt now dominates everything from the food we eat to the homes we live in and the governments we elect. It has become impossible to remove without risking collapse — a sign the disease has spread too far.
Household Debt: Families on Life Support
In nations like Canada, Australia, and the U.S., the average household is now one or two paychecks away from insolvency. Real wages haven’t kept up with inflation, yet housing, education, and healthcare have soared.
- Canada: Household debt-to-income ratio over 180%.
- U.S.: Over $17 trillion in consumer debt.
- UK: Household borrowing propped up post-Brexit consumption.
Families have stopped saving. They borrow to maintain the illusion of stability.
Corporate Debt: Zombies and Vampires
Many large corporations now exist solely to service their debt. These are zombie companies — unable to innovate or grow, but too big to die.
Low interest rates allowed massive borrowing for stock buybacks and executive bonuses, not productivity.
- China: Local government financing vehicles owe trillions.
- Europe: Corporate defaults are rising as rates climb.
- Global: Bond markets are saturated with junk debt one rate hike away from default.
Government Debt: The Cancer at the Core
Sovereign debt has exploded:
- U.S.: Over $34 trillion and climbing, with $1 trillion annual interest payments.
- Japan: Debt-to-GDP over 250%.
- Italy, Greece, France: All teetering on the edge of unserviceable obligations.
Debt used to be counter-cyclical — governments borrowed during downturns and repaid during growth. Now it’s structural. No political party dares to cut spending or raise taxes meaningfully. Democracy itself has been hijacked by debt dependency.
Banking Sector: Fragile Beyond Belief
Banks are supposed to manage risk. Instead, they’ve become risk multipliers:
- Leverage remains high.
- Derivatives markets are opaque and massive.
- Liquidity crises are one panic away.
We live in a world where a tweet can tank a regional bank. That’s not resilience. That’s rot.
Developing Nations: Strangled by Dollar Chains
Many poorer nations owe debts in U.S. dollars, forcing austerity, IMF restructuring, or outright default. They cannot print dollars, so they suffer.
This is financial colonialism in its purest form: a cancer spreading from rich nations into the global South.
If AI Had Been Used Then: AI would have revealed the unsustainable debt-to-productivity ratios and flagged systemic vulnerabilities in household, corporate, and sovereign finance. It would have advised targeted deleveraging, debt forgiveness for vulnerable nations, and transparency in banking risk. But the warnings would have been inconvenient — and ignored by those profiting from the metastasis.