Anyone hear Dylan Ratigan explain today why there will never be any "Jubilee" type debt forgiveness?

[NNN0LHI]

Think he was on the Martin Bashir show when he explained this.

And I am paraphrasing here but it went something like this. The question was where would the money for all this debt forgiveness come from? If someone wins that means someone else has to lose. Ratigan said it would come right out of government workers retirement funds. He said for ever dollar you forgive for one person there will be some other person losing a dollar from their retirement fund.

Does that sound right? Or is Ratigan full of it?

Don

[valerief]

1. Well, it sure as hell isn't going to come out of the .01%er's petty fund, which we call call the WAR

Budget.

[zbdent]

10. don't you start into that class warfare again ...

[valerief]

12. Ha!

[bananas]

2. No, that's wrong - unless he's only talking about government debt.

Banks are private institutions.
They can forgive any debt they want.

[dkf]

4. They sold the mortgages to the pension funds and other investors.

Its coming out of people's retirements.

[girl gone mad]

5. That's what put-backs are for.

[dkf]

13. Wouldn't you have to find **something** wrong to do the putback?

Surely not every mortgage qualifies.

The pension funds would need to sue the banks for the putback also. The legal fees could get expensive.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. But they won't want to - it would have to be a law from the government

Banks could forgive debt generally, without government action, but they won't, because that would put them out of business.

Any 'jubilee' would need to be coordinated to say what debts are forgiven/reduced, what happens to the entities to which the money was owed, and if there is general government money involved (eg issuing new money, like quantitative easing).

[dkf]

14. Their obligation is to look out for their shareholders first.

[bananas]

3. "Money" doesn't really exist - there are only agreements and promises made in good faith.

Where did all the debt come from?
It was made up out of thin air.
Where does "interest" come from?
It's just money created out of thin air.
By agreement.
But now we know that some people have not been acting in good faith,
which means the agreements can be renegotiated.
Agreements can be renegotiated even when both parties have been acting in good faith.

[whosinpower]

7. Absolute bullshit

Where does money come from in the first place? Think about this very carefully. When a bank gives a loan, or mortgage, they are not lending 100 percent of that money from their depositors....are they. No, they do not. Fractional banking allows them to base the amountthey can loan on how much money they hold. so, if they hold 1000 dollars - in Canada, they can loan out 90 000 dollars. And, in the US, the requirement is even lower. Where did that 90 000 come from? It did not come from someones retirement fund. It came from NOWHERE. It was born as debt, and only transferred into a real asset off the back of whomever worked it off to pay for it.

When the US government issues cheques, every cheque is guarenteed to clear because of the good faith and credit of the US government - even if they do not hold the cash, perse - the money is good as long as people have faith and trust in the US government and the US, as a nation.

The jubilee forgiveness throws a huge curveball into the stranglehold that banks hold over the citizens and nations of the world - because if debt was forgiven every seven years - then no one would want to loan any money to anyone for fear of never being repaid. But it would not cost retirement funds - IT WOULD COST THE BANKS THE ONE THING THEY HOLD OVER ALL OF US - THE GRINDING NEED TO REPAY MONEY OWED.

Obviously, if this were to happen, then no one would want to loan another any money. And also - then you have destroyed the entire risk manangement financial insurance industry because the risk of default just went up tenfold.

When you consider all this, you might come to the conclusion that this would mean the end of Wall ST as we know it - and that is why they hate it so.

But, if debt/money can be created out of thin air - there is no reason why it cannot dissapear just as easily.

[phasma ex machina]

8. Jubilee's inevitable regardless of how the banksters and THEIR Fed feel about it.

They need to learn to love sucking it down while joining us peasants in reality.

[banned from Kos]

9. Very little wealth in this country is owned by the banks.

Its actually easy to measure.

Bank of America has $144 billion in Net Tangible Assets.

Personal wealth in USA = $63 trillion in comparison.

Blackrock manages $3.8 trillion.

Bank of America is a punk in the scheme of things.

[phasma ex machina]

11. Banksters and THEIR Fed use a quadrillion of derivative leverage to own it all including

the government itself.

[JVS]

15. Um, no. His premise assumes that debt forgiveness would make creditors lose nothing.

If you declare bankruptcy, your creditors lose money. Your debt is forgiven because they have to face up to the fact that you can't/won't pay it ever.