ABSTRACT
Financialization had to creep into every corner of the household economy before the authority of the creditor class took on a sovereign, unassailable character. This chapter summarizes some of the arguments underpinning the case for debt refusal. These arguments have been developed in the debt resistance movement, whether aimed at cancellation of sovereign debt in the global South, or at household debt in the affluent countries of the North. A creditocracy emerges when the cost of access to each of the social goods, no matter how staple, has to be debt-financed, and when indebtedness becomes the precondition not just for material improvements in the quality of life, but for the basic requirements of life. The right of creditors to be made whole now routinely overrides the responsibility of elected national representatives to carry out the popular will, resulting in "failed democracies" all over the world.
