A lot of people are very upset about global financial conditions these days. Almost everyone I know is struggling to make ends meet, and failing at it. Debt levels are high, wages are not keeping up with inflation, our standards of living are going down year by year. The most likely endpoint of this process, for most of us, seems to be bankruptcy--But bankruptcy is increasingly being prohibited by law. The only people who seem to be prospering in the current environment are the Very Rich, Government Employees, and Organized Criminals.
In the banking crisis in 2008, we bailed out the banks. It has gotten us nowhere. The banking industry has continued the same bad practices that got it into trouble in the first place. We are heading for another crisis of the same kind, but orders of magnitude larger.
The usual endpoint for all this is a giant financial crisis, mass bankruptcy, hyperinflation, chaos, war, bankers and politicians hanging from lampposts, possibly a new Dark Ages for a few centuries-- And eventually a re-set of all the economic factors.
The Big Reset is going to happen, and everyone knows it. But maybe there is a different and better way to go about it--
I am talking, of course, about the 'Jubilee Year' concept described in the Bible. It can be adapted to our current civilization. Of course, I know there's no practical way to implement it because it strips power from the banking industry. This IS the internet though. It is also a blog that (frankly) no one but me is ever going to read. So it will do no harm to have a little thought experiment!
The Jubilee Year--
Here's a mechanism for debt forgiveness across the scale;
1) Banking crisis ensues, and the Banksters demand a bailout again, but THIS time;
2) The money is created from thin air again, but instead it is applied to all personal debts.
For example, a midwestern family owes $300,000.00 on their house worth $200K, and has $40,000.00 in credit card debt. $340,000.00 of government funny money is given to this family without the family incurring any additional tax penalties, etc. If they use it to pay off their debts, the banksters have their money back, and the family is debt-free. SO....
3) The banksters get the money, like they wanted;
4) The family gets debt-free like they wanted.
5) Expand this to everyone in our economy, and you have The Big Reset....
The only down side to this is that the Banksters can no longer charge interest because the debts have been paid off.
They can lend it to someone else if anyone is foolish enough to borrow it, but until they do, their bank accounts are full but they are making no interest on their money.
Since we have been operating on funny money since Nixon closed the Gold window anyway, there is literally no obstacle to the creation of as much 'money' as is needed to completely pay off everyone's debts in this manner. We can even throw in a year of free rent for everyone who is poor enough to not even be in debt. We could give everyone who is somehow not in debt at all a hundred thousand to spend anyway they want.
Suppose we have to create a Quadrillion Dollars to do this. What happens to the value of money? It almost instantly becomes worthless.
What then?
WELL... The Banksters will have computers full of these quadrillions of digital dollars that were paid back to them to settle all these debts. These dollars will rapidly become worthless. Too bad.
Real people will hold the titles to real property, free and clear. Good outcome.
It will probably be necessary at some point to exchange all the worthless digital greenbacks for new red-backs at a rate of a billion to one perhaps. Hopefully the red-backs will be backed by something real--maybe loaves of bread or something.
What have we accomplished? Really, its the same thing that is going to happen anyway, and soon. We just get the Big Reset all at once without the years of suffering and with less disruption. The Banksters do not even need to get their necks stretched with the Jubilee Year scheme, and their necks will certainly be stretched with any of the usual scenarios. Maybe that alone would make them think about it.
If the Trump-ster is going down anyway, and we are all headed into a giant financial paroxysm and possible global war, maybe he could declare all debts erased in this fashion on his way out the door. Highly unlikely I know, but it could work better than the usual Fourth Turning-to-Civil-War that usually happens in these cases.
The Jubilee Year--It's a wacky idea, it has never been tried, but maybe now would be a good time.
In the banking crisis in 2008, we bailed out the banks. It has gotten us nowhere. The banking industry has continued the same bad practices that got it into trouble in the first place. We are heading for another crisis of the same kind, but orders of magnitude larger.
The usual endpoint for all this is a giant financial crisis, mass bankruptcy, hyperinflation, chaos, war, bankers and politicians hanging from lampposts, possibly a new Dark Ages for a few centuries-- And eventually a re-set of all the economic factors.
The Big Reset is going to happen, and everyone knows it. But maybe there is a different and better way to go about it--
I am talking, of course, about the 'Jubilee Year' concept described in the Bible. It can be adapted to our current civilization. Of course, I know there's no practical way to implement it because it strips power from the banking industry. This IS the internet though. It is also a blog that (frankly) no one but me is ever going to read. So it will do no harm to have a little thought experiment!
The Jubilee Year--
Here's a mechanism for debt forgiveness across the scale;
1) Banking crisis ensues, and the Banksters demand a bailout again, but THIS time;
2) The money is created from thin air again, but instead it is applied to all personal debts.
For example, a midwestern family owes $300,000.00 on their house worth $200K, and has $40,000.00 in credit card debt. $340,000.00 of government funny money is given to this family without the family incurring any additional tax penalties, etc. If they use it to pay off their debts, the banksters have their money back, and the family is debt-free. SO....
3) The banksters get the money, like they wanted;
4) The family gets debt-free like they wanted.
5) Expand this to everyone in our economy, and you have The Big Reset....
The only down side to this is that the Banksters can no longer charge interest because the debts have been paid off.
They can lend it to someone else if anyone is foolish enough to borrow it, but until they do, their bank accounts are full but they are making no interest on their money.
Since we have been operating on funny money since Nixon closed the Gold window anyway, there is literally no obstacle to the creation of as much 'money' as is needed to completely pay off everyone's debts in this manner. We can even throw in a year of free rent for everyone who is poor enough to not even be in debt. We could give everyone who is somehow not in debt at all a hundred thousand to spend anyway they want.
Suppose we have to create a Quadrillion Dollars to do this. What happens to the value of money? It almost instantly becomes worthless.
What then?
WELL... The Banksters will have computers full of these quadrillions of digital dollars that were paid back to them to settle all these debts. These dollars will rapidly become worthless. Too bad.
Real people will hold the titles to real property, free and clear. Good outcome.
It will probably be necessary at some point to exchange all the worthless digital greenbacks for new red-backs at a rate of a billion to one perhaps. Hopefully the red-backs will be backed by something real--maybe loaves of bread or something.
What have we accomplished? Really, its the same thing that is going to happen anyway, and soon. We just get the Big Reset all at once without the years of suffering and with less disruption. The Banksters do not even need to get their necks stretched with the Jubilee Year scheme, and their necks will certainly be stretched with any of the usual scenarios. Maybe that alone would make them think about it.
If the Trump-ster is going down anyway, and we are all headed into a giant financial paroxysm and possible global war, maybe he could declare all debts erased in this fashion on his way out the door. Highly unlikely I know, but it could work better than the usual Fourth Turning-to-Civil-War that usually happens in these cases.
The Jubilee Year--It's a wacky idea, it has never been tried, but maybe now would be a good time.
Additional thoughts on this one--
ReplyDeleteThe Biblical reference is Leviticus chapter 25, verses 8 to 13.
There is a line or so at the end that I never before noticed, about how land sales were actually just purchases of the ability to harvest crops for the number of seasons remaining in the Jubilee cycle. So naturally, the value of the land decreases with each year--Until the year after the Jubilee, when the land value peaks for the original tribal owners.
Ingenious--Because it builds in a counter-cyclical balance to the usual boom and bust of land value speculation.
This practical insight also indicates to me that, somewhere in the Iron Age, some version of the Jubilee Year cycle was tried and found to be useful.