Most people would agree that recessions are terrible things, they cause widespread fear amongst people that will be anxious about their savings, their livelihood or even their next meal. On a nationwide level, economic downturns are events akin to natural disasters, they do massive damage and for the most part are widely accepted by society as an "inevitability", rather than a "rarity" ...But do we really need recessions?To boot, is there such thing as "good debt"? And how could something good cause so many issues? On top of this is there any way that we could just run an economy without debt and would we be better off for doing so. Well, it turns out we probably can, and in fact, there are many economies around the world today that are developing rapidly while going without this system that we just assume is a given.If we can critically explore these questions it will offer insight into how our modern financial system works, and why it means that despite our best efforts we are almost destined to go into a recession once every 10 years or so.Furthermore, Modern Monetary Theory is something so simple yet so complex all at the same time, it does really involve divorcing your mind from how you personally interact with money to ultimately grasp how cash works at an economy-wide level.A lot of supporters of the theory push it as a cure-all to any economic ailments, and you know what with the money printers firing away like they are right now we may finally get a chance to find out if they are correct, but in reality, it's not a prescription to fix a broken economy as much as it is an insight into how modern economies work. The Wuhan coronavirus, the active impeachment of a sitting US president, the earthquake and volcanic eruption in the Philippines, the floods in Indonesia, the magnitude 7.7 earthquakes in the caribbean, Australia on fire and then buried in ice and then on fire again, let's explore what all these disaster mean to an economy both at a local and global level. Norway's Economy has been used as the poster child for a socialist mixed economy done right? Is it really the perfect economy or just another country that won the oil lottery?Australia's economy! The land down under where the richest people in the world live. So why of all people, are Australians sitting on such huge piles of money?Japan became the first of the modern Asian countries to experience massive sustained economic growth. Japan had a lot going for it after the end of the war, it was able to rebuild with the help of the allies and go through its own modern industrial revolution. In the 1960s, Japan was growing at a rate of 10% a year which for a national economy was unheard of at the time, this economic growth continued and japan was able to ride the wave of globalization as the world's low-cost manufacturer. Japan developed a huge car industry, it was at the forefront of consumer electronics and was working meticulously to make sure that this newfound wealth was being invested wisely into infrastructure like high-speed rail, airports and metro systems that would make their economy even more efficient. At its peak, there was so much wealth in japan that the real estate market of Tokyo had some pretty crazy anomalies. In the late 80's it was estimated that the imperial palace covering an area of 3.4 square kilometers in central Tokyo had a real estate land value greater than all of the real estate in California. Of course, the imperial palace was never for sale and this was based on the cost per square feet in the area but it still should give a good idea of just how much money was washing around in Japan. In this book, we will look at how this all went so wrong and what it can tell us about countries that are today where japan was 40 years ago.