“Stealth” debt jubilees are here – and that’s a very good thing

We may not have had a full-scale debt jubilee, but many Covid relief measures quietly amount to “micro-jubilees”. That’s something to celebrate, says Merryn Somerset Webb, fanfare or no fanfare.

Small girl playing a trumpet ©
No need for a fanfare with little mini-jubilees © getty
(Image credit: Small girl playing a trumpet ©)

The history of debt jubilees is one of grand gestures. The Old Testament called for a trumpet to be sounded on the tenth day of the seventh month every 50 years — and for debts then to be cancelled and all servitude revoked.

Various ancient eastern kings are recorded as having offered jubilees on making it to the throne (possibly raising sacred torches to the event rather than trumpets). In 1792 BC King Hammurabi of Babylon cancelled all debt to the government and its officials, for example. Imagine the parties.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.