My HARDtalk interview transcribed | Steve Keen's Debtwatch

SK: ...[This is] a working model. But the idea would be, you would give the money to the public and if the person who received it was in debt, the first thing they would have to do is pay their debt level down. They could not spend.

HT: So basically a government would say, Look, we're not giving this extra money to the banks. We might even take back money that we put into the banks. We're going to give all effectively per capita. If you have any debts it has to go to that.

SK: That's right, it pays the debt down first of all. The reason we have to do something like this rather than simply writing the debt off is...

HT: It's a tax cut?

SK: No. It's very different to cutting a tax. If you give the money to everybody and then require those who are in debt to reduce their debt then they're better off obviously. But the complaint people make about a jubilee or a debt write-off is, What about me? I've saved money. I've bought bonds. I'm going to lose.