GLOBAL DEBT JUBILEE (A global demand for a global movement)

marchelo

What could the 99% possibly demand that would be at once so outrageous that it could actually effect REAL change, and reasonable enough for people to get behind? How about a Global Debt Jubilee.

Some web searching revealed that many have touched upon this same thread. Here are some excerpts I found particularly insightful: Quoted from http://alcuinbramerton.blogspot.com/2011/06/universal-debt-forgiveness-and-imminent.html

• When debt is fraudulent, debt forgiveness is the logical and only remedy.
• Debt or credit which cannot be paid back is never an asset; it is always a liability.
• All debt which charges a percentage originates in delusion. Debt grows exponentially indefinitely; income and other financial growth cannot do this.
• The total amount of money in circulation today in the West can only pay for a tiny fraction of the total private and public debt in the West. This fact is evidence of systemic fraud.
• Debt is manufactured through fraudulent means to reward a creative criminal elite.
• If the intention of a financial transaction tied to a loan, or tied to a financial inducement, is extortion, if it is, in effect, an elite Bankster scheme to bamboozle the borrower with small print or to blind him with science, that loan or inducement, should be struck off the record immediately and completely. The debt was not incurred with the informed consent of the borrower. The debt did not benefit the borrower. And the élite lender was well aware of these facts when the loan papers were signed.
• You cannot solve the debt problem by issuing more debt. You solve the debt problem by cancelling, completely, all national, corporate and personal debt. You do this simultaneously across the planet, and you do it permanently.
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When debt is fraudulent, debt forgiveness is both the logical and the only remedy for the situation. Whatever the name you give to the process - erasure, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, jubilee - debt forgiveness will eventually have to emerge at the forefront of global efforts to solve the ongoing systemic financial crisis.
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The only way to erase counterfeit money and counterfeit assets amounting to hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with these fake assets. They are not toxic assets. They are fake assets.
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Debt forgiveness accomplishes two important things. First, it eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise which is being employed to pay off unproductive obligations. Second, it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, creative invention and positive entrepreneurship.
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It reflects the century-old legal principle of the Doctrine of Odious Debts.

The Doctrine of Odious Debts was created to further international finance by limiting the ability of governments to repudiate debts. Three conditions had to apply before a sovereign state could repudiate a debt:

(1) The debt must have been incurred without the informed consent of the citizenry of the state.
(2) The debt must not have benefitted the citizenry of the state.
(3) The lender must have been aware of conditions (1) and (2) at the time that the loan papers were signed.

The United States employed these principles after the Spanish-American War to repudiate the Cuban debts.
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The situation is plain. You cannot solve the debt problem by issuing more debt. You solve the debt problem by cancelling, completely, all national, corporate and personal debt. You do this simultaneously across the planet, and you do it permanently. And then you recapitalise the whole bangshoot using an established resource base such as The World Global Settlement Funds and the associated US Dollar Refunding Project.
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Interestingly, the core idea of global debt forgiveness is not restricted to the benevolent ivory towers of economic utopians. It is beginning to be talked about, in public, by national parliamentarians.

At the end of August 2011, in Ireland, the Irish Finance Minister, Michael Noonan, had to respond to organised calls for debt forgiveness in connection with his EuroZone nation's struggling mortgage borrowers. The story was run prominently in the Business section of the Irish Times on Friday 2nd September 2011.

In Greece, debt forgiveness appears to be further advanced than in Ireland. At the end of September 2011, an important legal precedent was established. In accordance with a district court order in Larissa, an unemployed Greek woman who owed a little over 26,000 Euros to two banks, Eurobank and National, received a full debt discharge on her outstanding loans. The woman had a perfect payment record for eighteen years, and only fell behind when she lost her job. It is thought that the decision will probably be adhered to in thousands of similar cases.
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Here is another jubilee resource that was packed with info and articles going back for years. Sadly nothing about how the Occupy movement could be the spark needed set the idea into action...
http://spiritofjubilee.com/

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So I put the notion to the Occupiers here assembled, is a Global Debt Jubilee a fitting demand for the now Global Occupy movement?

Could a massive global strike be effectively coordinated to pressure our world leaders into such action?

Sea

It is and it could. Thanks for the suggestion Marchelo. I note its ancient practical origins. I would like to discuss this with you. I fear though it could be a touchy topic, apart from disagreements and so many opinions inside Occupiers themselves. For example economics involves so much, including sociology, and math that people are shy of. Agreeing that a jubilee would help might be hard for many reasons. So I don't want to argue that its good or bad or would work or wouldn't. I'm sure its good and that it would work if it could be done right.

I'd like to approach it round about, starting with general ideas of what has happened in the past and how we are formed from our past. Occupy is here and now and so it promises a break with the past. However, liberal Occupiers could possibly become conservative once successful, in whatever plan of action we choose. Just now, in Sacramento, we are starting to be "forced" in to the hard stuff of choosing what to concretely do. I think the world's history and the history of national development shows conceptual trends that if illuminated could help us decide on a jubilee or not. Or on something equally effective, whatever it is called.

marchelo

Hey @Sea, I honestly don't know if it is a touchy subject because no one is talking about it. I think the prospect is still a bit too fantastic for those unfamiliar with its historical roots to take it seriously.

What sparked the idea for me was the deal the European banks reached with Greece: they forgave half of the debt ($126.7 Billion) as a carrot to get the Greeks to agree to the austerity measures. This showed me that when push comes to shove, the banks would rather forgive some debt then have the whole country revolt and never pay any of it back.
With a coordinated global effort, we could demand massive debt forgiveness as step one towards rebuilding a functional civilization.

Sea

Wow! You're on to something Marchelo, seeing how the banks will bend. I hope this wisdom expands. I bet we can do the strategic and tactical work, and the possibly harder economic "theory" work, we'll need to do to bring Unions, Occupiers, honest business people, and people in general together.

If people could agree — see the discussion "How to Disagree" — a global cancelation of debt might be very instructive. It think it would solve problems. Yet who knows? Things can have unforeseen consequences. One way you get around unforeseen consequences is by the cleverness of your theoretical preconditions.

Canceling debt would suggest that debt is actually owed, a flow/ownership of capital calculation. And we can cancel it without us going broke, a question of the strength of our economy. That regardless of ideology there shouldn't be poor people or nations, reviving ethics. And that even if we can't solve the poor people problem we're going to lend aid anyway, showing our good will by at least trying. Being good Samaritans! Wouldn't that paint private ownership of capital in a stark profile?

Wrapping our heads and hands around the idea, just as a mind twister problem to solve, might open the doors on the "mystery" of capital and its daily anarchic movement around the world, that is unbeknownst to but a few, and that is theorized as to being productive of wealth!

STRATEGIC CONSIDERATIONS OF CANCELING DEBT

Let's imagine that come this May Day there is an international general strike that stops the world! I believe that with proactive legal action now by our attorneys, we can avoid being charged with conspiracy and mitigate harsh police reaction. For this, Occupiers must get on the conference calls at INTEROCCUPY.ORG.

At that point we might choose to offer the banks debt cancelation, in exchange for them being able to come to terms with respect. This again I think is possible.

However for us to muster the non-violent May Day Strike and to force the banks to cancel debt, we must be able to see a path forward after that. I think the path forward involves framing our further deliberations in terms of the following considerations. 1.) That theoretical and political discourse must become feminist and womanist centered. 2.) That this will lead us to learn Feeding Physics and thus see more clearly what Marx was talking about. 3.) It becoming clear that we intend to feed everyone, the world will see our moral and ethical authority, much to our advantage.

Sea

Thanks Marchelo for the progress you've made. As we build for the world-wide May Day event, think about being keyed to the United Nations and about convening an international GA, Debt Cancelation could be a major step towards making those plans successful.

1loveAl

One issue with forgiving world debt is the entire system is built on its existence. The Fiat dollar system is the sole basis for world debt. If we forgive that debt, the fiat system looses its legitimacy. That said, lets do it! :)

Sea

Your right @1loveAl. The trick for Occupy is to end the unfairness which involves the "Fiat" system and the ending of which would therefore really upset things, without being accused of conspiracy or opposed violently. Our (Occupy's) army of scribes is stronger than their army of swords. We need to sharpen our "blades", which I think these discussions are doing.

marchelo

There have been a number of recent developments that have made the albeit slim chance of a global debt jubilee ever so slightly more possible.

Most of the news is coming from the Euro-zone, where their economic collapse is admittedly a bit ahead of our own. Belgian workers recently went on a general strike (the first in 2 decades) shutting down buses, schools, trains, and factories of many major companies- including Audi, Volvo, and CokaCola to protest the EU proposed austerity measures. Expect more of this kind of protest action as the Greek sovereign debt payment is due in March, meaning that the Greeks and many others will be forced into accepting horrendous austerity measures at the behest of the bankers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9065152/Stalemate-in-talks-on-Greek-austerity-measures.html

Just so we are clear: the latest numbers show that Greek debt is now sitting at 159% of GDP. That means the country of Greece owes 59% more then their country is capable of producing. It will take generations of brutal austerity to pay off that debt. They know this and are refusing to accept it.

"Officials privy to the crisis talks told Sky News that party leaders and their teams were scrambling to find alternative cut backs that could meet or as one official put it "water down" creditors' demands for lower wages, salary and pension cuts on top of already 30 to 40% slashes sustained in the past two years.

[excerpt from http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16163901 — If these measures are adopted and the government does in fact cave into pressure, then workers will be faced with an Armageddon," warned Thanos Vassilopoulous of Greece's biggest labour union GSEE.
"We must resist. We must revolt."
GSEE and Adedy, the civil servants union, have called for a 24-hour nationwide strike on Tuesday, warning of heightened strike action in response to added austerity.]

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I recently spoke with a good friend of mine who is a professional economist with [a large financial firm] about the ramifications of a debt Jubilee. Here are some highlights from the conversation:

• The sudden mass cancellation of debt would likely cause a consumption boom along with rapid inflation as consumers flood the market and producers struggle meet demand.

• A Debt Jubilee would have to be implemented as if it were a sudden surprise to everyone involved to prevent major market distortions (from people making wild purchases) prior to the Jubilee. This could be accomplished by post-dating the effective debts (The Jubilee of 2012 shall forgive all debts public and private as of January 1st 2012... or something to that effect)

• It would have to be GLOBAL or certain nations would appear to be punished for fiscal responsibility (such as Germany).

• It would be advisable to offer incentive to fiscally responsible individuals and nations who have no debt. This could be done by paying them the mean average amount of the debt that has been annulled for all others in their local economy. (for example: you have no debt, but your neighbors owe on average $50,000. The Jubilee would reward your fiscal responsibility by paying you $50,000.)

• The money used to pay off all debts would be fiat money (just like the US dollar...) as decreed by the collective will of a global protest. Something of this scale is only possible along side the threat of a global general strike (but more likely after an actual and prolonged strike has taken place), so it would essentially the people declaring all debts off and enforcing it with massive non-participation.

-This is more or less what the Greeks are doing, but 100% debt forgiveness isn't an option for just one country, so we get the continued downward spiral of bail-out stand off: debt payments can't be made and require a bailout, more austerity is needed to get the bailout, less economic activity due to the austerity, more bailouts needed to pay down the growing debt, until what? If Greece goes the way of Iceland, the euro is done for. Something our banks aren't sufficiently insulated against, but it is hard to know exactly how much fallout we would feel from a euro collapse. This kind of information is not easy to come by.

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The notion of a Global Debt Jubilee really has me looking at the proposed May 1st global strike with particular interest. The groundwork of a global protest network is being laid with each successful day of action, all it could take is a coordinated effort with a network of local support in place. People are remembering the power they have when they work together.
Its a good time to be alive!

skoalbite

http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/728.1

"The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.

Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)

In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country."

Hell yeah!

KnaveDave

I agree. I suggested the same thing myself as possibly the only idea big enough to set the economy right and to end (as in eliminate even from the record) the bailouts the big banks have experienced from their crony government... at least a national, if not a global Day of Jubilee, upon which ALL debts are cancelled. (http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2011/11/occupy-wall-street-now-unoccupied-but-stronger/)

The cancellation of ALL debts should be done first throughout the U.S. The U.S. government would continue to owe any money it owes to other entities outside the U.S., and entities of any kind outside of the U.S. would continue to owe their debts to the U.S. until they agreed to a mutual flushing of debts. This would reboot the world economy, one section at a time, starting here.

It would, in other words, be a complete reboot of the U.S. economy. All banks would start with only the assets they hold in deposits and no loans ... a massive reboot of the banking system. All debt on all homes would be ended. Shares in stocks would not be wiped out (so it would not entirely devastate retirement funds that have ownership in corporations), but all bonds would be wiped out, and all debts owed to ANYONE by anyone or any institution. So, yes, there would be damage to retirement funds and to many things, but it would be a cleansing damage overall, like a great fire wiping out a badly diseased section of forest. One doesn't want to wipe out a healthy forest, but when an entire forest is riddled with disease, fire is nature's way to cleanse the entire system and let everything have a new chance to compete from scratch.

It would be justifiable (and has great historic moral precedence if you go way back to biblical times) on the basis that the economy is so corrupted and the institutions that are running the correction are so corrupted, and that only the institutions that created the problem are the direct beneficiaries of all corrections currently being made, such that only a complete reboot will give the economy a chance to restore with vibrancy. It would put new blood throughout the system by changing the balance sheets of every corporation and business in the nation. When the system has been this badly corrupted, it is time to level the playing field completely by wiping out the whole debt system that has corrupted it. It would give immediate release from the bondage of debt to ALL. What many would lose from their retirement systems (from bonds being annulled), they would gain in home ownership and debt-free status.

The files of the system are so corrupt throughout that the system needs a clean start, and this is exactly the right idea that would strip MAJOR power away from the largest of banks and put it back in the hands of individuals. Large banks would still be powerful in that they hold more in deposits, but most of their wealth exists in extremely top-heavy leveraging of those assets that would all be stripped away overnight.

--Knave Dave
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog

slave

How are you going to dictate to the dictators? Where is the meat? Where is you source of power?

Debt, economic sanctions, military threat are their very important controlling means, ensuring their supremacy. And now you want to take one big weapon away from them, and do that within the structure of their system? "He / she who owns the gold makes the rules" is the least you should know about in this power structure / system.

Sea

Although all thought is based on previous thought, Issac Newton, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft might be considered our most important seminal thinkers. I hedge that statement a bit because — whereas the four, and virtually any influential thinker you can name is considered part of WMS, or western modern science — WMS itself grew out of TEK or traditional ecological knowledge. TEK contains the ideas of WMS except that the WMS tradition used the knowledge to invade and the indigenous TEK tradition used the knowledge to develop food stuffs. "Heavenly" inspired WMS contains TEK while it genocides the people who developed TEK. Earth inspired TEK hopes that WMS will stop genociding. Please search on "TEK" and "WMS" to see how I have tried to develop these ideas into useful knowledge.

Our earliest species racial and sexual understandings began in the Middle East. They began there because that is the land migration route from Africa to the rest of the world. Its where a debt cancellation Jubilee idea began. I agree with Marchelo that a Jubilee could happen and that it could possibly be what gets Occupy on a realistic map.
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marchelo

@slave your question has already been answered:
"• The money used to pay off all debts would be fiat money (just like the US dollar...) as decreed by the collective will of a global protest. Something of this scale is only possible along side the threat of a global general strike (but more likely after an actual and prolonged strike has taken place), so it would essentially be the people declaring all debts off and enforcing it with massive non-participation."

You dictate to the dictators by refusing to play their game by their rules. Massive non-participation has toppled dictators around the world already (looks to Arab Spring). People are remembering the power they have to effect change when they work together- the people are the source of power.

slave

@marchelo, Hell yeah! as skoalbite might say, but and this is the huge BUT, how are you not going to participate in this Ponzi scheme (i.e., fiat money debt bubble ridden capitalism) if you don't have an alternative viable scheme (i.e., alternative power structure / economic system) to replace it with.

Do you realize the biggest impediment why it is so difficult to build a general strike to an effective size and enough duration to make an impact? Isn't it that the ruling class can outlast you in their system more than you can - i.e., by default. Doesn't that in and by itself raise the huge issue that the global working class (even if they gained a global consciousness as you suggest) is under an economic siege?

Believe it or not toppling dictators is the easy part. Replacing them by something that won't be another dictator is the much more difficult part. That dictatorship is there by default. Some might even say the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don't know. So unless you destroy / replace the conditions that generates exploitation, i.e., the property relations, i.e., money / debt / monopoly, i.e., capitalism i.e., private ownership, by REPLACING these with an egalitarian....i.e., common ownership, could you really consider anything will change for the better for the overwhelming majority of the world (i.e., the 99%)?

The beast has many heads, and once you try to cut one head it will grow several more. The Arab Spring will fail just like the South African "anti-apartheid" movement / the Central and Latin American rebellions and their governments / "the Iranian Revolution" / etc. as long as "the beast" exists by default. This Ponzi scheme is not your typical Ponzi scheme, it is the mother of them all.

Sea

I think Occupy can succeed because its a new generation that is following its grandparents 60s generation that taught the world important lessons. This millenial generation knows things that it didn't have to learn. Most importantly that it can change the world. Yet for Occupy to succeed more learning is needed. We need to learn more about what the 60s generation learned. What it learned was the content of a liberal arts education, the most progressive philosophical system Western society has yet seen. Its achievements in civil rights, for women, for the environment, for gender awareness, and for many other important causes was and remains unparalleled

The terms capitalism, Wall St chicanery with the Fed, absence of the periodic revolution Jefferson urged on us, Enlightenment ideas, lessons of the 20th century and the fin de siecle that ended the 19th century, Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Holocaust, and many other teaching moments that are well known, haven't been been made more fully known by Marx's work directly nor by women's work directly. Marx's analysis of capital — distinguished from capitalism communism or class conflict — is a lesson in physics that aligns the liberal arts with the work of women.

A Jubilee year to cancel debt won't solve all our problems by itself. However adopting it as a strategy for Occupy to pursue, would force us to learn and supplement what we already know, so that we will end up smarter than the United Nations. That is how we can change the world. Our revolution must be non-violent and keyed to the United Nations. Economic railing must fully explain what capital ** is per se. A strategy we could unite behind would allow us to bond and learn more fully what the 60s generation embarked on.

** Capital is the work of women that is transformed in to all things people, including the things we don't like about people.

marchelo

Odious debt, Jubilee, and the cost of ignoring history

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/odious-debt-jubilee-and-cost-ignoring-history

marchelo

An interview with Dr. David Graeber, professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London on his book - Debt: The First 5000 years. The First 5000 years. How the concepts of debt and credit have defined human history and what this means for our current credit crisis and the future of our economy.

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