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"Robbing Peter to pay Paul": When debts are due and the money to pay them is lacking, whether because of bad luck or deliberate theft, debtors often make their payments by borrowing or stealing from other investors they have. It does not follow that this is a Ponzi scheme, because from the basic facts set out there is no indication that the lenders were promised unrealistically high rates of return via claims of unusual financial investments. Nor (from these basic facts) is there any indication that the borrower (banker) is progressively increasing the amount of borrowing ("investing") to cover payments to initial investors.
A ponzi scheme needs a constant stream of new investors to pay the previous investors.
All the investors are promised a positive return on investment.
What is going on here is not really a ponzi scheme as there is no positive return on investment.
It is basically just a loan.
Originally posted by wonderworld
reply to post by Hessling
I agree the EU is hanging on by a thread, and so is the US and China but the theory of "robbing peter to pay paul". doesnt work well when both Peter and Paul are broke and are borrowing more from the printing press.
There is a whole new game being created behind the scenes to fix this problem and non of us will like it.