Posted on 01/19/2009 4:54:07 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
The Treasury's £200bn plan to soak up toxic debt will be followed within days by a US variant from the Obama team. Germany cannot be far behind.
As one bail-out succeeds another at ever more inflated price tags, rescue fatigue is becoming palpable. People are bewildered, fearing that good money is being thrown after bad.
"It is easy to conclude that none of the Government's policies are working," said Professor Peter Spencer from York University. "We must not lose sight of the fact that they have prevented the collapse of the monetary system."
The first three pillars of the global bail-out are in place. Government money is rebuilding the annihilated capital of banks. This has further to run. Core lenders in the US, Europe and parts of Asia will be nationalised, but that is a detail at this point. It scarcely matters who owns the banks – unless you are a shareholder – so long as they lend.
The Fed has cut rates to zero. It is buying mortgage securities on the open market, and eying Treasury debt next. Fellow central banks are exploring their own ways to print money.
The $3 trillion (£2 trillion) fiscal blitz by the US, China, Japan and Europe plugs an emergency gap. With luck, it will keep the world economy on life-support just long enough to stop recession and banking crises from feeding on each other with lethal effect, as they did in 1931.
The US version is a "bad bank" for mortgage debt. It is more or less the old "TARP" passed by Congress, before the funds were diverted into bank recapitalisations. This method worked after the Savings & Loan crisis in the 1980s. The market found a floor. The Treasury even made a profit.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
These people need to take a deep breath and relax. This whole situation has reached something akin to mass hysteria. They have scared the citizens to death. It’s time to allow them to absorb the situation, and start entering the marketplace again. All these gloom and doom predictions are going to do, is cause folks to tighten up tighter than a clam’s ass, which will destroy any chance at a recovery.
If the global MSM couldn’t report for about 180 days, I think the global economy would be a lot better for it.
But the Government must create a sense of panic and hysteria, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to pass their thievery.
yitbos
Israeli Jews had an interesting system in the Bible where the land was divided among the tribes eternally, but individuals could lease the land from the owners. However, periodically, every 99 or 75 or so years, all land would revert back to the original owners, and the slate would be clean. The owners could then lease it out again if they wanted, or not.
Every 50 years. That is the jubilee debt forgiveness spoken of.
Needless to say, application of the jubilee is moral only if you are on notice when it will be applied.
If you wanted to force a modern society toward communal ownership of all goods and services, this would be the way -- just make it impossible to figure out who the "real" owners are. Then we'd have no choice but to fall back on "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Okay, everyone’s debt is absolved, all people all corporations, all governments all businesses, everyone and everything. We all start over... :-)
The Year of Jubilee is spoken of in Leviticus. It was the year after 7 Sabbath years, (i.e. 7 x 7 = 49) and the 50th year was the year of Jubilee. There were implications for land ownership, IIRC, I don’t think it was “debt reduction” in the sense this guy is talking about. Land had to lay fallow. I’ll have to go back and red the passage...google Year of Jubilee and Leviticus and I bet you’ll come up with the exact passage.
Including what is owed you
The whole point of a jubilee is that everone knows it is coming and methodically wind down debt going into a jubilee year. To just suddenly declare a “jubilee” goes by the name “default”.
But what if it weren’t Jubilee, but a declaration that CDOs and other derivatives were unlawful gambling contracts which the courts would not soil themselves by enforcing?
Didn’t land ownership also revert back to the original owners, or thier heirs, during Jubilee?
What a concept!
It scarcely matters who owns the auto companies – unless you are a shareholder – so long as they build cars.
It scarcely matters who owns the residential rental properties – unless you are an owner – so long as they rent.
It scarcely matters who owns stocks in the stock market - unless you are a shareholder - so long as the companies remain in business.
It scarcely matters who owns YOUR PROPERTY - unless you are the owner - so long as the government dictates everything that can be done with that property.
Savings in Q4 finally went to a positive +2% and retail sales dropped around 10% because we went slightly positive. I don’t think the media is the one that caused the ridiculous debt bubble of the last 10-12 years or the one that encouraged banks to leverage up 40+:1. The media is maybe 5% of the problem. If you look at the stock movement of the major bank collapses you can see the stock move way south usually a week or two before the media catches on—the insiders are talking.
Yes. I think the Year of Jubilee was actually every 49 years. Every seven years was a Sabbatical year and all personal debts were to be forgiven and every seventh Sabbatical year was a year of Jubilee and all debts were forgiven, slaves were freed and land returned to the original owners. Houses inside walled cities were excepted from the Year of Jubilee, as they were simply homes and not farmland designed to make a profit. I think the intent of the land clause was to keep one individual or family from moving to a point where they owned everything and everyone else was a tenant. I remember reading it and thinking how much sense that would make in terms of preventing the kinds of problems we have now. Of course, part of it was specific to Israel, particularly the part about land, as it was implemented right after they moved into Canaan, and every family started out with an equal amount of land.
It recognized that some people were better at life than others, and that some would fall inexorably into debt while others accumulated everything.
As with most things, they grabbed a half line of Scripture and twisted it to suit their needs. Can you imagine the wailing if anyone seriously suggested going to a Biblical based system of economics?
I seem to remember reading about Huey Long talking about this. I don’t remember to much about it. That was a long long time ago. Anybody else remember what that was all about?
I figured we would fall back on "Possession is [99.99 percent] of the law."
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