Don't forget, Melenchon isn't asking a lot here. The structurally married bond and FX markets capable of coercively enforcing fiscal discipline on sovereign nations have been a global operation only since the 1970s. Before then, governments had a high degree of economic autonomy. But fixed exchange rates were abandoned, capital controls were dismantled and the bond and FX markets became globally synced in electronic trading systems. In the event of a government threatening nationalisation and public investment, international investors - big capital funds demanding privatisation - were able to short the nation's currency and simultaneously dump its bonds. The newly empowered global 'creditor class' began to act as an international regulatory body with the ability to punish offenders with higher interest rates and austerity demands. For half a century it's been a bit like floundering and begging for mercy under the cosh of Wonga International teamed up with the Rialto coin traders serviced by the Inquisition and the local baillif. This global disciplinary system is a very recent innovation - with some political and central bank coordination it could be crushed as quickly as it was constructed.

What is the big picture? The really big picture? I'll tell you. The 4,400 year old private interest-bearing moneylending system that's provided Western economies with their core dynamic is rapidly collapsing into an abyss of misallocated investments, over-leveraged and unpayable private debt, human redundancy, social inequality and headless violent reactions. The system has already undergone two major civilizational collapses and numerous near-collapses. It relies on the relentless extraction of surplus from human activity and the environment, which is then monetised, leveraged and recycled as interest-bearing debt by greedy, uncultured, private elites and small-time emulators for their short-term gain. Accumulating assets and recirculating money as private debt is perversely regarded as the pinnacle of 'individual freedom'. There is no inherent logic of permanence regarding the benefits temporarily enjoyed by the mass of workers and consumers during the brief social democratic era. Nor is there an inherent logic of environmental sustainability other than the clumsy, ex post facto and too easily manipulable price mechanism. The replacement of this system, whilst avoiding the mistake of the demarketised, totally centralised command economy, depends on the democratic issue of currency as a public utility with investments targeted towards long-term social and environmental needs. That simple? The system was built on a disarmingly simple principle, and the elite are desperate that we should never understand it or regard it as replaceable. While China tries to apply the principle of public purpose in a cagey game with the financialised, dollar-dependent global system, in the post-Keynesian neoliberal West only @TheGreenParty has made noises about this core issue. What stands in the way? Oligarchic power, relentless indoctrination, miseducation, ignorance, cynicism, demoralisation and absence of will. This system has crushed the West's soul and narrowed its intellect. Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of the few who regularly drilled down to the bedrock. "You know, for instance, beforehand with positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he? For he knows of course that I shan’t pay it back. From compassion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who keeps up with modern ideas, explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that’s what is done now in England, where there is 'political economy'."