Community | September 02, 2011 | 28 comments

When Our System of Debt & Credit has become a Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy

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Schnookums
Finally serious economists are considering a position I have been maintaining and writing about since the 2008 financial meltdown. Whatever its name— jubilee, repudiation, abolishment, cancellation, erasure—debt forgiveness, will have to eventually emerge forefront in global efforts to solve an ongoing systemic financial crisis.

“On a grand scale the only way to erase counterfeit money and (counterfeit) assets of hundreds of trillions of dollars is to erase the debts associated with those fake assets. (Let me underscore again, these are not “toxic” assets, they are fake assets.)… Forgiveness in general, and forgiveness of debt in particular, stand as virtues if they free us up to acknowledge, address, and learn from our culpability, start anew, and create forward.” ( The Big Squeeze, Part 3: The Quiet Rebellion: Civil Disobedience, Local Markets, and Debt Erasure (January 29, 2011)

Debt forgiveness, therefore, accomplishes two important things. It eliminates the increasing and outsized portion of productive enterprise to pay off unproductive obligations, and it clears the ground for new opportunities, new thinking, invention, and entrepreneurialism. This is why the ability to declare bankruptcy is so essential in the pursuit of both happiness and innovation.

Currently we are mired in a “new normal” and calls for “austerity” which are nothing more than the delusional efforts of a status quo to avoid the consequences of its own error and fraud and to profit evermore. So bedazzled by the false wealth created by debt multiplication and its concomitant fantasy of ever-higher returns, this status quo continues to be stupidly amazed that people are not spending and that the economy is not picking up. But how could it be otherwise?

Productive wealth has been trapped in a web of parasitic theft, counterfeiting, liability evasion, non-regulation, and prosecutorial non-accountability. All the fundamental attributes of a functioning exchange economy have been warped to reward creative criminals. I spoke extensively about this in my posts from 2008. ( Imaginary Worth, Empire of Debt: How Modern Finance Created Its Own Downfall (October 15, 2008)

The unsustainable nature of debt

Two observations: 1) Fabricated/parasitic so-called “wealth” destroys value by diluting the value of productive wealth. 2) Debt/credit that cannot be paid back is never an asset and is always a hot-potato liability (needing to be foisted to a greater fool to garner “profit” and transaction fees):

“The models [modern debt are] based upon had no contact with reality. They assumed unlimited growth and ability to pay. When matched against the reality of people paying ten times their salary for mortgages that actually added more money owed to their principal (i.e. with negative amortization), required no money down, and set up “balloon payments,” large step-ups in payments after a few years) there is no possible way they could NOT default in a predictable span of time.” ( Part II: How the Credit Default Swap Scam Works (October 13, 2008)

Systemically, all debt that charges a percentage (“usury”) originates in delusion. Debt grows exponentially indefinitely, growth (income and otherwise) cannot. This leads to a widening condition where the fruits of productive “growth” devoted to interest payments increase until those fruits are entirely consumed. (The Elephant In The Room: Debt Grows Exponentially, While Economies Only Grow In An S-Curve (Washington's Blog)

Once this happens, stores of wealth (hard assets) begin to be cannibalized to make up for the difference. You see this in Greece with its sale of public assets to private companies, and in middle-class America where people are liquidating retirement accounts to pay for their cost of living.

This problem is compounded by a private Federal Reserve that lends money into circulation at interest, and then allows the multiplication of this consumer debt-money liability through fractional reserve banking. The money in circulation today could pay only a small fraction of the total private and public debt. That fact alone is evidence of a kind of systemic fraud.......

Please continue at:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept11/Zeus-debt-forgiveness-9-11.html?source=patr...
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28 comments // When Our System of Debt & Credit has become a Fraud, Debt Forgiveness is the Last and Only Remedy

  • unimatrix0
  • Saladin
  • Saladin
    • +1
      Saladin  
    • Schnookums, you understand better than anyone why this can't be done.

      In a fractional reserve system, forgiving loans causes deflation. And there are so many of these "fake assets" that the deflationary spiral it would cause to forgive them would be catastrophic to the global economy.

      It was the same reason we engaged in the bailout. Despite how much bullshit surrounds all these Wall Street issues, that really was a serious threat.

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
    • +1
      Schnookums  
    • Saladin:

      I know why it can't be done and still save the fractional reserve banking system......but I'm not interested anymore in saving the fractional reserve banking system :)

      I recognize where you are coming from, though. Within the confines of FRB, wholesale debt forgiveness destroys the system.

      In reality I am a proponent of the several transition ideas for taking the world economy from a fractional reserve system to a 100% reserve system over the course of a year or two. However, in the face of a disorderly unwinding of the economic and monetary systems involving greatly expanded war, famine, and devastating poverty; I am willing to consider other transition methods including abrupt high-velocity low-amplitude changes in the interest of preserving life and humanity.

    • 1 year ago
  • Dagum
    • 0
      Dagum  
    • Saladin:

      That's generally the idea. Fractional reserve banking will collapse on it's own eventually anyway, it's a mathematical certainty. But we should at least attempt to switch to full reserves in a controlled manner.

    • 1 year ago
  • wolfess
    • +1
      wolfess  
    • How does the Fed's decision to investigate the biggest bank offenders connect to this? Are we at #3 or 4 in the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief; or have we not gotten that far yet?

    • 1 year ago
  • percipi224
    • +2
      percipi224  
    • The elephant in the room? People don't mind debt, borrowing is a good thing, but...the reason the economy isn't growing small business is because we are tired of being cheated and lied to, strong armed and then blamed for trusting. Small business creates jobs, not middle size or big business. Small business found itself shunted out of banking loans at our regional banks and moved into credit cards with the big boys. They cheated us with the usurous rates, fees and then mortgages became the new con. Small business believed and trusted these behemoths and now small business is being blamed just like home owners of all stripes. Blame the victim. The economy isn't growing because the multinational banking industry hiding behind an american flag robbed us blind. There is a mind set now, why bother, they will just come and take it anyway. The cultural mindset is the problem. Until the perpetrators are punished the "victim" cannot go out, trust, or create a new life. Because we will only be raped again. People in their fifties have had their dreams and ideas raped three times economically in their adult lives. This last was the worst, so why start over, why do anything, buy anything, go anywhere? Some moneyed interest somewhere, some idealogue somewhere will make sure you don't succeed too much if at all.

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
    • 0
      Schnookums  
    • percipi224:

      You're right. People don't mind debt and borrowing can be a wonderful thing as long as the borrowed money is the result of someone else saving, and not made-up capital with people's savings only serving as a reserve in case the bet goes bad. That is the cancer at the heart of our system.

    • 1 year ago
  • Visionra
  • mybologna
    • +1
      mybologna  
    • Maybe I'm too much of a pesimist but I'm betting on world wide global feudalism and eternal debt slavery. I don't see debt forgiveness ever happening. Great article though, even if it is wishful thinking.

    • 1 year ago
  • wally60
    • +1
      wally60  
    • there are not to many countries in the world including our own that can pay back their debt.i am not saying we should walk on it but with the current goverment
      and past leaders it will happen.

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
  • jubal
  • faye59
  • Lairderg
    • +7
      Lairderg  
    • Thanks for this post! I'm with you on this. There are so many countries (and ours is becoming more like them) that are in so much debt, they'll NEVER get out of it. Of course, along with this forgiveness, there need to be sensible and verifiable systems to fund innovation, inventions, and "make things not money" businesses.

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
    • +5
      Schnookums  
    • Lairderg:

      There are different ways to construct debt and credit systems, and the one we have now is among the worst systems ever imagined (unless you are a bank). It is designed to never be in balance.....there is always more debt in the system than there is money to pay it off which means there will always be losers. No matter what.

      I agree with you, with forgiveness must also come analysis of what went wrong.....and structural reorganization.

    • 1 year ago
  • wally60
  • wolfess
    • 0
      wolfess  
    • Schnookums:

      Make damned sure Geithner, Bernanke, Summers and Greenspan are nowhere close to this re-organization or we will find ourselves in this same situation again within a few years; and that means removing our current president also.
      Pwr 2 the new peons! Dismember ALL in the current power regime!

    • 1 year ago
  • Vic_Romano
  • Dagum
    • +6
      Dagum  
    • Speaking of debt, Obama would win my vote if issued an executive order to U.S. Department of Education, forgiving federal student loans, which aren't dischargable in bankruptcy, so forgiveness is the only way to get rid of them.

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
    • +4
      Schnookums  
    • Dagum:

      That would be an excellent way to start.

      Graduated higher education students are leaving this country in droves to look for work and to escape their crippling school debts. It is quite alarming to me to watch the intellectual migration happening in reverse. For well over a century, the best and the brightest came to this country.....now they are leaving.

      Very sad.

    • 1 year ago
  • keithponder
  • PressCore
    • +2
      PressCore  
    • keithponder:

      Verdad. Though a horse can be drawn to water noone can make him drink.
      The tragic thing about humans is that those who lack eyes, ears, and touch
      would give anything to have & use them. But those that have them often
      treat them as though they were- so not a big deal- they're dispensable.

    • 1 year ago
  • wolfess
    • 0
      wolfess  
    • PressCore:

      This is an excerpt from the remainder of the above article: reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage -- if I state it NOW maybe this statement will NOT come to pass.
      Pwr 2 the not-quite-yet peons! Dismember the current financial feudalists!

    • 1 year ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  
    • Forgive???? No problem, anger only hurts it's harbor-er....

      Now as far as letting go of the fact that crony-capitalism has consigned the majority of the population to indentured servitude........

      How to best deal with those who think they own us.....?

    • 1 year ago
  • wolfess
    • 0
      wolfess  
    • Anonmaly:

      How to best deal with those who think they own us.....?
      The guillotine, the guillotine!
      Pwr 2 the not-quite-yet peons! Dismember the current financial feudalists!

    • 1 year ago
  • Schnookums
    • +10
      Schnookums  
    • "This subtle debt extortion creates a system of never-ending debt-slavery for a vast majority of the population. When this “manageable” slavery is aggravated by a desire to use hardship to extort ever greater assets from the overburdened at ever cheaper prices (what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism”), by open and unapologetic widespread fraud, and by the unjust offloading of risk and liability to taxpayers who had nothing to do with poor decisions of private banks, then the systemic abuse is revealed in the daily lives of citizens."

      .....and here we are.

    • 1 year ago
  • PressCore
    • +4
      PressCore  
    • Schnookums:

      I have an idea. Why don't all 300+ Million Americans, each, sent them a
      voided check for $66 Trillion dollars as a vote of no confidence to the
      Bankster Fraudsters. And an anonymous note telling them if that won't
      put them in the black, some pitch and feathers will. That way if they don't
      take the hint and get outta Dodge while the gettings good...American
      ingenuity will figure out something more persuasive next time there's talk
      of a bailout. Sooner or later it'll dawn on them to think on the lyrics to the
      Jimmy Buffet tune: " I don't know where I'm gonna go when the volcano blows "

    • 1 year ago

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