It was not an accident that, when Charles Dickens wanted to write a story about how much people depend upon each other and how tightly our lives are linked together, he made his main character a money-lender named Scrooge.
Debt creates a bond of unusual strength and complexity.
Financial connections can be mutually advantageous avenues of economic intercourse, clever levers that raise wealth and power for all. It can also be a forceful weapon or even a snare that entraps borrower, lender, or both. Financial connections have always been both local and global, involving both states and markets. In the past twenty years, however, technological change and liberal market reforms have essentially globalized the international debt structure, placing debt dynamics increasingly outside the jurisdiction of nation-states. These factors have changed both the nature of international debt and the state's role in the international financial structure.