Reset The Economy: Delete The Debt.

reply to post by ketsuko


The 160 Billion a year we currently spend on financing the national debt would do away with the need for any austerity, since there'd be no debt to pay to service.

That money would mean we wouldn't be spending more than we take in, because we wouldn't need to pay that money in addition to everything else.

But you're right..we need to look at the problem in its entirety and work out better systems that prevent spiralling debt circles.

It isn't beyond us, but for it to happen we need to work from a clean slate.

reply to post by MysterX


Even without debt service in our budget (U.S.), we have some social programs that will still necessitate us spending more than our taxes bring in. That means that wiping the debt clean wouldn't do us any good without system-wide reform because we'd still start out operating in the red the very next day thus putting ourselves in debt.

reply to post by NthOther


A big part of the problem lies with rampant and out of control consumerism to keep the economies circulating and clattering and clunking around in an ever increasing debt cycle, both personal and public.

People are suckers for 'new' and are easily manipulated to feel they are somehow lacking if they have a car or TV that is more than a year or two old, or they don't own the latest or fastest new gadget, and on and on.

My opinion is the banks should have been sacrificed instead the Government chose to sacrifice the peoples financial and social security instead.

We have a situation where there are going to be mass unrest in the workplace, strikes and industrial action is looming, and general tensions are rising amoung just about everyone.

And the banks continue to give us the metaphorical finger, by awarding themselves massive bonuses of up to half a Billion quid, while managing to make losses of multi-Billions and justifying it by claiming they need to pay to keep the best people!

Mad, just mad..if the 'best' people's best can only produce losses of £Billions..they ought to be on the dole, not getting £500 Million sweeteners.

reply to post by ketsuko


Sure, but without the debt, more opportunities would exist in employment, better services and conditions would prevail deminishing the need for so much spending on those social programmes in the first place.

At the very least, you'd be skimming the surface of debt, not weighted down with concrete boots at the bottom.

We have had a system that worked, back in the fifties and sixties, that was dismantled in the seventies and eighties, briefly put back into operation in the mid nineties, and then totally destroyed by eliminating the laws that kept the bankers in check.

Rewrite the regulations, start enforcing labor and consumer laws, stop letting companies bypass the laws put into place to protect our rights.

While we are at it, time to put local governments and courts back in check. These local governments are running roughshod over our rights more than the fed gov. They kow tow to the corporations, and beat the citizens down at every opportunity.

Any mistake you might make will cost you several hundred dollars. Time to end the high pay, early retirement, and fat pension plans that city and county employees enjoy.

I think the problem is if you talk about getting rid of the debt, the debt is essentially somebody else's money, that they have leant to you.

So if you wipe out 'the debt', what you're also doing is wiping out somebody else's money.

And the somebody else (in this case mostly the Chinese) aren't going to be too happy about that.

But you're also talking about everybodies pension pots, their savings, etc. Can't wipe out debt without also wiping out savings.

Erasing the debt WOULD effectively solve the problem.....in the same way making Rape, Murder, Theft and Fraud legal would empty the prisons and make crime stat sheets halve the # of criminals a nation has in a matter of hours. It does solve the problem, in that narrowest and specific way ...but there is something in all that about cures killing patients that is worth remembering, I think.

It is true that National Public Debt is utterly absurd for the levels, and that isn't even touching intergovernmental debt (the form of debt which COULD be written off without destroying individual people).

Most of the US debt, like so many nations on the link above, hold the majority as Public debt. I.E....Some member of the public bought a bond, treasury note, T-bill or other form of debt through Government issue. 'Member of the public' includes every Union for pension funds. It includes every municipality and other Government program of retirement. It includes most, if not all 401k baskets and many IRA's directly, with what isn't direct being tied closely enough to crash along with everything else if the underlying debt "products" just went belly up on value by erasing the trillions in debt that back them.

I couldn't personally tell a person like my mom or anyone else's mom that their savings from a lifetime of putting a little away here and there into retirement accounts (Invested in public debt products, as much as not) is now gone by outright seizure of Uncle Sam so another crazy game of numbers could be attempted to make doom look a little less doomy for this hole we've dug ourselves.

When this Piper demands payment, he isn't going to accept checks or payment plans...and fate won't let us off this easy, IMO.

reply to post by Painterz


Most debt is nothing but ledgers in a book.

Money is fabricated in the fractional reserve system, and vast sums are handed out to those in positions of power because we eliminated the rules that kept the bankers from robbing the bank.

Not only have these fraudsters robbed the current generation, they are robbing the next and the next after that the way they are going.

There is nothing decent or fair at all about our current system.

One man´s debt is another man´s wealth. The US debt exists in the treasury bonds, which are bought by different investors, mostly banks, as well as other countries.

In 08, just one large bank failed. Look where this lead to. If the debt was erased it could crash near to every institution holding the debt currently, which would possibly to lead to the crashing of every economy in the world.

Unless some solution is found, which is very unlikely due to private interests (nobody wants to lose their "investment" , there is no way to fix the current system. The whole economics system would need to be restructured in order for the debt to be erased, a new way of economic system to work needs to be found.

Otherwise resetting the debt would take us back to middle ages.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


With the way the rules were changed, Rape, Murder, Theft and Fraud have been made legal, for those with extreme wealth.

National private debt is also absurd, even more absurd than public debt. It is hard to imagine how much of the derivatives market is nothing but debt backing debt backing debt, so that the bankers can continuously get a slice of everyone's pie.

Pension funds and retirement funds, and savings under 500K could be saved. Start a new currency that is only for the US, not the world currency, and honor individuals who put the money they earned into the system.

Slice off the top, and let the small investors keep what they have.

Screw the fraudsters and the currency manipulators.

Of course, the other problem is that if you erase all debt. What happens to most people who now live in their own homes? Do you displace them? I don't yet own my home. I've paid a decent amount on it, but I'm still in debt over it. Technically, someone else owns a chunk of it still. So, since I don't own all of it, am I out on the street, do you send someone over to chop off the parts I don't yet own? How do you deal with that? Do I get back what I paid into it? Or am I just SOL?

Are you going to do that all across the country?

If so, you have a right royal mess on your hands because there isn't enough rental housing to pick up the slack.

You'll have a mess of empty houses and a bunch of homeless people without the assets to attain homes.

At least we do own our cars.

But, my point is that you would have a massive boondoggle of hard assets that would be suddenly up in the air with no real owner.

You would be adding this in top of the sudden vanishing of most all retirement accounts which exist only on paper because they are invested, not hard or liquid assets.

poet1b
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

With the way the rules were changed, Rape, Murder, Theft and Fraud have been made legal, for those with extreme wealth.

('raises paw to make a point....) nvm.. I can't argue that with a straight face. You hit it too close to home for being true in these modern times.

National private debt is also absurd, even more absurd than public debt. It is hard to imagine how much of the derivatives market is nothing but debt backing debt backing debt, so that the bankers can continuously get a slice of everyone's pie.

I can help you with that imagination part. It looks something like this. Keep in mind that floating 7-8 Trillion dollar value placed on all gold known to have ever been mined on our planet, if it could all be stacked in one spot, and I do say, the totally absurd scales of this become hard to do more than laugh at...if it were funny, of course.

Pension funds and retirement funds, and savings under 500K could be saved. Start a new currency that is only for the US, not the world currency, and honor individuals who put the money they earned into the system.

I'm not going to personally dig back into it all today for updated numbers, but if I'm not mistaken the Federal Reserve Bank most directly responsible for publishing the figures that matter here is the St Louis one in terms of searching. They track, as a routine matter, all money. I mean..*ALL* money. Paper, coin and digital bit. Then they break it down in every way you could imagine. There are even break downs for coin denominations currently out, and further broken way down from there for where and in what form they take. It's really silly for the efforts taken.

However...what matters...is they track account types, amounts, distribution for locations and totals. Like ..retirement accounts of some or all kinds, nationally or globally, and how much sits in them all, cumulatively. As I recall from my work on the 2012 budget thread I did, the numbers at that point were 20-22 Trillion for combined U.S. private retirement deposits/investments. It'd pay our national debt in one shot, like magic.

It would also destroy every middle class individual in our nation, like the Midas Touch crossed with Typhoid Mary. There are reasons and moments in life I can point to for why I hate the 'ends justify the means' thinking and am equally scared to death of where that logic can lead. This is one of those examples.

The real question, has this occurred through default or design. I'd suggest design. If default it may be correctable.
Design is quite another story. The enormous financial benefit derived will NEVER be relinquished by the recipients.
It is obviously not in their best interest. it is of course a huge burden on the people. Does anyone actually believe they care about our well being ? So the world economy goes down the crapper. You can bet the family farm their piggy banks are not stuffed with worthless fiat money or Treasury Bonds. Yeah it sucks. The good news. The Bank of International Settlement, The World Bank and Chairs of all Central Banks would like to thank you and say SORRY !

reply to post by MysterX


TPTB are gonna do a reset alright. Don't you worry about that. The problem is that dark figure behind the curtain is just gonna wait till everyone is screaming for a break from the hyperinflation, before he pulls that lever.
Oh, and did I forget to tell you the the Wizard of Change will require that EVERYONE GET AN RFID/INVISIBLE TATOO to access your special drawing right number. You have a choice of your right hand or forehead! Are you happy now!

No good resetting the debt until at the very least the books start to balance otherwise you're resetting the inevitable, the very thing you want to reset the debt for in the first place.

reply to post by MysterX

Reset the economy, delete the debt.

One step further, abolish borrowing, abolish debt, abolish usury, and finally abolish the banks.

Destroy the financial thugs once and for all. Leave them no crevices to hide.

But we will still need economists (fancy pants accountants) to diligently track all the resources, including labor.

reply to post by MysterX


Its funny you mention this, but used to in days long gone, there were many debtors holidays.

And did you know that the first recorded word for "freedom" actually meant "freedom from debt."?

Debt always grows exponentially, while the real economy can only grow in an S-curve. So that means that periodic debt jubilees are needed from time to time.

In Sanskrit, Hebrew, Aramaic, ‘debt,’ ‘guilt,’ and ‘sin’ are actually the same word. Much of the language of the great religious movements – reckoning, redemption, karmic accounting and the like – are drawn from the language of ancient finance. But that language is always found wanting and inadequate and twisted around into something completely different. It’s as if the great prophets and religious teachers had no choice but to start with that kind of language because it’s the language that existed at the time, but they only adopted it so as to turn it into its opposite: as a way of saying debts are not sacred, but forgiveness of debt, or the ability to wipe out debt, or to realize that debts aren’t real – these are the acts that are truly sacred.

Interesting little article if anyones interested.

www.washingtonsblog.com...

reply to post by monkeyluv


"The problem isn't just too much debt but lack of resources and environmental damage (including global warming)."

No buddy the problem is exactly to much debt! You see when our financial institutions lend 90% on the dollar/pound that's a problem as any morron could tell you this does nothing more than create a system that can only fail in the end. hence our current predicament.

Banker scum are the issue, remove them and remove the problem!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


If you consider that there are a 100 Million retirees with a significant amount of money in retirements accounts, that is about 220,000 each on average. From my understanding, the banks basically had a gun to the head of those retirement accounts, and that is how they got bailed lout.

In a controlled reset, that money could be saved, but if conservatives like Romney have their way, the banks will be allowed to steal all of the retirement funds, and still leave future generations with huge amounts of debt.

The problem is that there is significant number of people programmed by right wing talk shows, into supporting conservative policies that are against their own best interests. All we can hope, is that enough of these people wake up, and we succeed in getting politicians in place in Washington to actually do something for the average US citizen.

I should also add that there are a lot of liberals brainwashed by liberal arts colleges who also support policies that work against their own best interests, who have far too much say in the democratic party.

Clearing everyones debt is essentially bringing about global collapse. Fiat currencies are backed by debt and most of the world is financed by debt. Retirement savings are invested in it, commercial paper is what keeps farms running, our homes and cars are purchased on it. The dollar is backed by debt (as is every other fiat currency). Canceling the debt is the financial equivalent of dropping nuclear weapons over every major city in the world. It would essentially undo the past 400 years of financial growth... ever since fractional reserve banking started being used.

Doing this would be a very bad idea.

Wrabbit2000
I'm not going to personally dig back into it all today for updated numbers, but if I'm not mistaken the Federal Reserve Bank most directly responsible for publishing the figures that matter here is the St Louis one in terms of searching. They track, as a routine matter, all money. I mean..*ALL* money. Paper, coin and digital bit. Then they break it down in every way you could imagine. There are even break downs for coin denominations currently out, and further broken way down from there for where and in what form they take. It's really silly for the efforts taken.

There's three measurements of the money supply. M1, M2, and M3. They stopped counting M3 so it can only be estimated now. It was the most interesting number too.