Emergent

Monday, October 1, 2012 19:54 - 8 Comments

DEBT JUBILEE: An Emerging Global Consensus!

Jubilee is in the air and in a very big way now that the Occupy Movement has come to embrace the concept as demonstrated by their 1 year anniversary rallying call of universal debt resistance.

See Occupy Movement Morphs into a Debt Resistance Movement.

To help promote their new platform they co-published and co-wrote The Debt Resistors Operations Manual. As noted in earlier articles, collective debt absolution is not a new concept.

What is new is that the world’s newest and most enthusiastic social movement has made debt resistance their mission of the moment. This is big news because it will project what is perhaps the most powerful counter Establishment strategy to the forefront of the revolutionary fervor that is slowly, but surely gripping the Planet’s vanguard.

And once the Planet’s vanguard is in accord on this matter then watch out because the people are hungry for economic relief, and for a viable means of cutting the criminal class down to size. This is sure to happen because no other social justice cause has more widespread support or has as such a diverse following as does the idea of a debt Jubilee !

This article is not designed to favor any particular methodology with regards to the best ways for individuals, States and organizations go about the process of debt absolution. Tactics will be forthcoming as the movement gains ground. In the mean time individuals should check out The Debt Resistors Operations Manual.

It is the focus of this article to show the extent of the current debt Jubilee discussion, and to emphasize that its a discussion that needs to come to the forefront as the most appropriate collective first step for the Social and Environmental Justice Community !

 This article is part 4 in a series of articles on the subject of a debt Jubilee. Please visit the following links for more context.

• 1) Anthropologist Dr. David Graeber on the Necessity of a Debt Jubilee.
• 2) The Tradition of Collective Debt Cancellation in the Ancient Middle East: A Tradition We Must Revive !
• 3) THE PEOPLE’S ENDGAME: When Debt is Fraud, Self-Absolved Debt Cancellation is the Only Remedy !

 

Talk of Debt Jubilee at the Mainstream Level

 

Biblical Debt Jubilee May Be the Only Answer – The Daily Telegraph - by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor.

“In the end, the only way out of all this global debt may prove to be a Biblical debt Jubilee”~ Ambrose Evan Pritchard

[segment link]

Is it Time for a Debt Jubilee - MoneyWeek – by Simon Wilson
Mr. Simon is University of Cambridge graduate in political science. He is also an economics editor and writes about finance and economic matters for MoneyWeek.

“There are also plenty of more orthodox voices who support the idea of massive debt relief as the only route out of a financial crisis and economic depression caused by excessive debt” – Simon Wilson  [Segment link]

“Consumers Need a Debt Jubilee” - Business Insider CNBC – by Stephen Roach
Stephen Roach is a senior executive with Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment bank. In addition to his position at Morgan Stanley, Roach is a lecturer at Yale University’s School of Management and Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

Mr. Roach says, we need “ways to forgive the excesses of mortgage, installment and revolving credit, as what was done in the 1930s, that will help consumers get through the pain of deleveraging sooner rather than later.”  [Segment link]

“Debt Forgiveness Would Revive the Economy” – USNews – by James Rickards Hedge Fund manager for NYC in USNews:
James G. Rickards is an American lawyer, economist, and investment banker with 35 years of experience working in capital markets on Wall Street.

“It is not too late for government to do the right thing. Mandatory debt forgiveness in part—a modern Jubilee—for underwater mortgages, student loans, and excessive consumer credit balances would be a tonic for the economy” ~ James Rickards    [Segment link]

Special Report: A “Great Haircut” to Kick-Start Growth – Reuters – by Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

“More than three years after the financial crisis struck, the economy remains stuck in a consumer debt trap. It’s a situation that could take years to correct itself. That’s why some economists are calling for a radical step: massive debt relief.

But it’s not just the liberal economists and doom-and-gloom financial analysts calling for a great haircut. Even some institutional investors, who might suffer some of the impact of debt reductions on their portfolios, are seeing a need for a creative solution to the mess” ~ Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein

A Year of Jubilee for Student Loan Debt - Huffington Post – Charles J. Reid, Jr. Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas

“As I envision it, student-loan forgiveness would work much as the general amnesty that followed the Vietnam War — it should be sweeping and total. The Federal Reserve has the power to purchase federally-backed assets, and did so aggressively at the height of the crisis of 2008/2009, when it granted relief to the banks that caused so much mischief” ~ Charles J. Reid, Jr.  [Segment link]

Can Debt Spark a Revolution? - The Nation – By Anthropologist Dr. David Graeber author of ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’.

“Debt is how the rich extract wealth from the rest of us, at home and abroad. Internally, it has become a matter of manipulating the country’s legal structure to ensure that more and more people fall deeper and deeper into debt. [...]

Financialization,” then, is not just the manipulation of money. Ultimately, it’s the ability to manipulate state power to extract a portion of other people’s incomes. Wall Street and Washington, in other words, have become one. Financialization, securitization and militarization are all different aspects of the same process. [...]

Most revolutions, revolts and insurrections in world history have revolved, at least to some degree, around debt, from the uprisings that created the Greek democracies to the American Revolution—or pretty much any other anticolonial revolt. We may be standing on the brink of a similar juncture. [...]

A debt jubilee, after all, affords the possibility not just of economic renewal, but of intellectual and spiritual renewal as well. [...]

This is why organizing a movement of mass resistance is so important. Our leaders have long since demonstrated that they are no longer capable of thinking big. Technocratic tinkering will get us nowhere. Only a social movement can change our moral and political horizons of possibility—and those horizons desperately need to change. [...]

Occupy was right to resist the temptation to issue concrete demands. But if I were to frame a demand today, it would be for as broad a cancellation of debt as possible, followed by a mass reduction of working hours—say to a five-hour workday or a guaranteed five-month vacation. If such a suggestion seems outrageous, even inconceivable, it’s just a measure of the degree to which our horizons have shrunk.  [Segment link]

 

I included the next listing because a very well placed world economics insider has concluded that we are headed for a “big financial system reset”. And reset is the primary theme of a debt Jubilee. Mr. Pal isn’t advocating a debt jubilee because its not in the lexicon of most hard core mainstream financial professionals to consider the periodic absolution of debt to maintain economic and civil order.

He is pointing to the only other alternative and that is a forced reset.   There are two types self correcting/balancing dynamics at work in the human world.  One is self-imposed out of diligence and prudence.

The other is also self imposed, but it results from over indulgence, wanton abandon and sheer carelessness.  Popular terms for forced reset are wake up call, reality check or in the simplest of terms—a crash.

Mr. Pal is certain that we are on a runaway locomotive with no brakes. It certainly feels that way.  His advice to his clients sounds like batten down the hatches and wait so see what new system emerges in the aftermath of the “Big Reset”.

He predicts that the brewing financial maelstrom will come to a head sometime in late 2012 or 2013.  If we are indeed on the road to financial collapse then the biggest players know all too well what’s coming and we can be sure that they have their contingency plans.

There are plenty of theories around what those plans may look like.   Whatever they offer us as “solution”, this we can be sure of.

Their “solution” will only consolidate their merciless power hold. Any solution that doesn’t involve widespread debt cancellation; does not restore the right of each country to print and issue their own money and does not put an end to fractional reserve banking is no solution at all !

The Big Reset by Raoul Pal

Mr. Pal is founder of Global Macro Investor “; previously co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for GLG Partners, one of the largest hedge fund groups in the world. Raoul came to GLG from Goldman Sachs where he co-managed the hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives in Europe. In May of 2012 he created a slide show in which he predicts nothing less than the collapse of the World’s financial system. To see Mr. Pal’s slide show go here.

Economist Michael Hudson

Michael Hudson is research professor of economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC) and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. He is a former Wall Street analyst^[2] and consultant as well as president of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET) and a founding member of International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies (ISCANEE).

A few of Hudson’s comments on the matter of debt and debt cancellation.

It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders (“tyrants” to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state. [Source]

Rome’s creditor oligarchy wins the Social War, enserfs the population and brings on a Dark Age. Aristotle did not mention empire building as part of his political schema, but foreign conquest always has been a major factor in imposing debts, and war debts have been the major cause of public debt in modern times. [Source]

Near Eastern rulers proclaimed Clean Slates to preserve economic balance. To restore economic balance, antiquity’s cry for debt cancellation sought what the Bronze Age Near East achieved by royal fiat: to cancel the overgrowth of debts. [Source]

The fall of the Roman Empire demonstrates what happens when creditor demands are unchecked. Under these conditions the alternative to government planning and regulation of the financial sector becomes a road to debt peonage. [Source]

How can selling sovereign assets and imposing austerity on Greek citizens (taking money out of their hands through higher taxes and lower benefits) do anything other than hollow out value and contract the Greek economy in the face of a deep global recession? Michael Hudson: It can’t. Greece’s debt needs to be written off. [Source]

“It seems unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that large sectors of the New European population can be made subject to salary garnishment throughout their lives, reducing them to a lifetime of debt peonage. The only way to resolve it is to negotiate a debt write-off…” ( The Coming European Debt Wars: EU Countries sinking into Depression (Michael Hudson, Global Research, April 9, 2010) [Source]

“[We’ll Have] a Never-Ending Depression Unless We Repudiate the Debt, Which Never Should Have Been Extended In The First Place” (Washington’s Blog) [Source]    [Segment link]

 

Economics Professor Steve Keen

Steve Keen is a professor in economics and finance at the University of Western Sydney. He classes himself as a post-Keynesian, criticizing neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. He is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Development.

Professor Keen is well regarded amongst enlightened and mainstream economics professionals. He too proposes a form of debt cancellation that he refers to as a “modern Jubilee”. In keen’s version central banks would create money to give to people so that they can pay off their debts.

His solution is designed to minimize destabilization of the financial system and to prevent financial injury to “innocent bystanders”. His twist on Jubilee has met with controversy within the enlightened economics community.

The controversy is understandable since so many facets of the financial-monetary system are inherently corrupt, rigged and skewed in favor of its designer-operators or the banking-finance establishment. We don’t want to salvage many of its features. We might agree that a controlled demolition of the financial-monetary system would be a prudent approach.

 

New Culture Sources and

Organizations Rallying Around a Debt Jubilee

 

Debt—and the shame that surrounds it—is the tie that binds the 99 percent. Can young people re-imagine it as something productive, rather than a tool for profiteering?

The Occupy Student Debt Campaign Organization

OSDC Campaign Goals

• Tuition-Free Public Higher Education
• Zero-Interest Student Loans
• Private Colleges Must Open Their Books
• Student Debt Written Off In The Spirit of Jubilee
• [Segment link]

The Strike Debt Organization

The P2P Foundation: The Debt Strike is the Key Weapon to Restore Popular Power

If people really want change, they are going to have to find ways of taking power – and debt strikes are one way.

An important argument, previously made by Dmytri Kleiner of the International Debtors Party, that finance is the key energy keeping the current system together, but therefore also its point of vulnerability

Excerpts from Sahil Dutta

This financialised model that began with Thatcher and flourished under Labour has, however, created a new choke point. As the bankers found, much like those miners many years before, control over the economy’s fuel gives you power. That’s why banks can rig the market, ignore the government, and pay themselves huge bonuses in the midst of a recession.

However, this is only half the story. For every creditor there must be a debtor and both are necessary. While the creditors – the banks – have realised their power, the debtors – everyone else – haven’t. A glance at the level of private debt reveals just how much potential there is.

Student debt now stands at an estimated £40.3bn, while a combination of stagnant pay and high living costs has left Britain’s average family with unsecured loans worth £7944 each – a staggering total of £210bn of unsecured debt. It is a severe drag on an already knackered economy. Suppose, though, if people refused to repay.

Rather than channeling falling incomes back to the banks that scripted the recession, they simply reject repayment. Immediately, there would be a union of debtors capable of clawing power away from financiers. The old cliché would kick in: ‘Owe the bank £10,000 and the bank owns you.

Owe the bank £10,000,000 and you own the bank’. Like those canals and railways of industrial Britain, the credit cards and student loans of financialised Britain give people leverage over elites. The difference is that it now takes debt strikes, and not labour strikes, to harness this power.

The idea of debt write-offs is not even that unfamiliar. In David Graeber’s history Debt: The first 5000 years, he shows how debt jubilees have been common since the debt slates were wiped clean in ancient Mesopotamia.

More recently, we’ve had debt cancellation for developing countries and, right now, the Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for a similar solution for countries like Greece. Yet, unless they are forced to listen, today’s bankers will ignore all pleas for ‘forgiveness’. A debtors’ strike is about using the power that debt gives to people to demand concessions.

There are, however, obvious difficulties. To begin with, the stigma that debt holds must be overcome. The idea of refusing to repay a loan seems offensive. If you sign a contract, it’s your moral – not to mention legal – duty to pay it back. However, this misses the fact that debt is a political, and not a personal, issue.

Climbing private indebtedness is the outcome of a deliberate strategy on the part of banks and a wilfull impotence on the part of government. Banks developed, sold, and lobbied against the regulation of corrosive debt instruments.

They cannot, then, demand that the rest of the population bleed so they can maintain their practices. When the creditor-debtor relation is seen properly, as a socio-economic arrangement, negotiation becomes a fact, as well as an economic necessity.  [Segment link]

 

ICAN: The International Citizen Debt Audit Network

Coordinated efforts in Europe and North Africa to fight against Debt and Austerity

ICAN’s slogan “We don’t owe! We won’t pay!”, bringing together movements and networks in different European and North African countries, fighting austerity measures through the implementation of Citizen Debt Audits.    [Segment link]

Anonymous Proposes Operation Jubilee November 5th

[Segment link] 

Cultural Groups

 

The Judeo-Christian Community

The Jubilee USA Network is the largest interfaith pro jubilee organization in the world

The Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of over 80 different groups, both secular and religious, working for
debt cancellation and fairer global finance for impoverished countries around the world. Well known Jewish
groups such as American Jewish World Service and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC)
have joined with Jubilee to fight global poverty through debt cancellation. The Jubilee Congregations pro-
gram is an opportunity for faith communities to play a vital role in this work.

Jewish Voices Raised to Break the Chains of Debt       [Segment link]

 

The Islamic Community

Islamic Relief Worldwide

Islamic Relief believes that unfair and crippling debt is trapping individuals, communities and countries in poverty. As a result of the massive debt repayments that poor countries are forced to make, there is less money available for governments to provide their citizens with basic services such as education and healthcare.

As an aid agency based on Islamic humanitarian principles and an agency committed to relieving extreme poverty, we believe that it is our duty to advocate for change in order to assist countries crippled by international debt. To overcome this we support four key advocacy demands:

• Bankruptcy procedures are created for countries that are unable to repay their loans
• All un-payable debt is cancelled by fair and transparent means, and the resources that are freed are monitored to ensure they are used for social welfare purposes
• All ‘odious’ debt is cancelled
• Trade justice; creditor countries and institutions should re-evaluate their past and present lending practices to avoid future undue indebtedness

Complete cancellation of debt should be considered in the event of a project failing for reasons beyond the control of the borrower. This is applied to our own projects too.  [Segment link]

 

Non-Religion based organizations who are actively pursuing a debt Jubilee for deeply indebted Third World countries.

Jubilee Debt Campaign: England

Jubilee Debt Campaign is demanding an end to the scandal of poor countries paying money to the rich world. We are calling for 100% cancellation of unpayable and unjust poor country debts. The world’s most impoverished countries are forced to pay millions of dollars EVERY DAY to the rich world in debt repayments, while poverty kills millions of their people. Meanwhile, creditors use their power over indebted countries to force them to privatise their services, open up their markets or cut essential spending. [segment link]

Jubilee South

If human rights are to be respected, we cannot subject countries and people to debt repayments where people are already living below the poverty line. Are current and future generations obliged to repay debts which have nothing to do with them. Jubilee South believes that the External Debt of countries of the South is immoral and illegitimate:

Creditors have used debt as an instrument of exploitation and control of people, resources, and countries. This alone is enough to render the so-called debts of the South as illegitimate. The immorality and illegitimacy of these debts also rests on the terrible impact of the burden of debt servicing on the economies of the countries of the South, on the environment, and on the lives and well being of the people.

Furthermore, many of these debts were contracted by illegitimate parties, and/or through illegitimate means, and/or accompanied with illegitimate terms, and/or used for illegitimate purposes. The peoples of the South do not owe these debts. These “debts” have in fact been paid many times over in financial terms and, more importantly, in human terms by peoples of the South. Jubilee South rejects the continued plunder of the South by way of debt payments!

The CADTM has set itself five missions:
— to offer a detailed analysis of the origins and consequences of debt in the Periphery, and of the technical and political options for its cancellation;
— to elaborate alternative policies for financing human development and radically transforming the world’s institutional and financial framework;
— to define the road towards the universal protection of fundamental rights;
— to strengthen social movements and citizen networks at national and international levels;
— to challenge political leaders at each of these levels, pushing them to introduce guarantees of the fundamental human rights and to implement the alternatives proposed by the CADTM and other social movements.  [segment link]

 

Themes Intimately Related to the Idea of Jubilee

A Day of Atonement for all the World’s Religions

In a recent appearance on Big Think, School of Life co-founder and author Alain de Botton proposed a solution that may seem novel because we happen to act on it so rarely. When you have offended someone, you need to apologize.

In Judaism, a day is set aside just for this purpose, and Botton says Judaism is “one of the wiser religions in this regard.” Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for Jews. It begins at sunset on September 25 this year.

Botton says this ritual is so important because we’re simply not good at apologizing on our own. It’s awkward at best, and at its worst an apology can lead to “an escalation in anger.” And yet, a structured occasion to apologize, such as Yom Kippur, allows for apologies to be received in the right context, in which forgiveness is both asked for and received promptly.

And so in the current context we might push Botton’s argument to its logical conclusion: should there be a day of atonement between all of the world’s religions

What’s the Significance?

In the political context, apologies are often seen as signs of weakness. That may be unfortunate, but let’s not be naive about the realities of diplomacy. Nations are not people, and we should not expect them to act like people. However, there are more tools that citizens possess today than ever before to get their leaders to listen to them.

Here’s one heartening example:Israel-Loves-Iran is a viral campaign that is made up of Israelis and Iranians alike posting pictures and messages to each other, such as this one from an Iranian soldier:I love Israeli people, I love peace. & I’m not ready [to] die [in] your war.  [segment link]

 

The Forgiveness Project

Forgiveness is not a single magnanimous gesture in response to an isolated offense; it is part of a continuum of human engagements in healing broken relationships. Nor is it a one off event because one day you might forgive and the next day hate all over again. Above all, it is difficult, costly and painful, but potentially transformative. An integral step to forgiveness, as The F Word stories show, is to face the past because if you do not face the past, it can run you all your life.  [segment link]

1 2

Related Posts:

• Anthropologist Dr. David Graeber on the Necessity of a Debt Jubilee
• The Long Tradition of Collective Debt Cancellation in the Ancient Middle East
• CALL TO ACTION ! Let’s Declare a Year of Jubilee on the Most Awaited Day in History !
• THE PEOPLE’S ENDGAME: When Debt is Fraud, Debt Cancellation is the Only Remedy!
• Chris Hedges and the Occupy Movement Put Govcorp on Notice !
• The Great Wikileaks / Occupy / Jubilee Movement: The Intensifying Apocalypse And Your Two Choices !
• STATE OF THE WORLD REPORT 2013: The Endgame Enters a Critical Stage
• CALL FOR A GLOBAL JUBILEE: Why and How to Celebrate December 21st, 2012
• A Citizens Assembly: From Occupy Movement to a Permanent Political Force
• Derrick Jensen’s 20 Premises on the Irredeemable Nature of Civilization as We Know It