[TheOtherHobbes]

No, this is incorrect.

Firstly, the debt burden is only diffused because those "mustache twirling CEOs' decided it should be.

Pensions used to work just fine before they were financialised by sharks. So did insurance.

No one sane should be trying to increase the returns on a pension fund by gambling on student debt, on real estate loans, or on consumer credit.

That was exactly the approach that caused the implosion of 2008 - or more specifically, it was "mustache twirling CEOs" hiding the fact that the investments they were selling as a sure thing were junk loans with a cheap wood veneer.

Secondly, even if this wasn't true, the social and economic costs of an economy that runs on usury instead of productive investment are so predictably crippling that the hair cut, with associated uncontrolled demolition, will happen anyway.

A debt jubilee would do a lot to restore confidence, because everyone will be able to stop looking nervously at everyone else's obligations and wondering if they're going to be able to meet them. Instead, some realism will be restored to book values.

This would still be cataclysmic, because the financial industry needs to understand that it can no longer run on cocaine and bullshit.

But it won't be the financial equivalent of a self-inflicted nuclear strike, which is a real possibility as things stand today.

[forgetsusername]

>A debt jubilee would do a lot to restore confidence, because everyone will be able to stop looking nervously at everyone else's obligations and wondering if they're going to be able to meet them.

Oh yeah, I'm sure the creditors will be highly confident about future lending after a jubilee, because they went from wondering if debt will be repaid...to knowing it won't.

Where do people come up with this stuff?

[anigbrowl]

You know what, fuck the creditors. Let them feel what it's like to have no money coming in for a while. If they don't want to lend any more they can spend down their capital or go and get jobs. The society we've built around the premise of mortgaging the future is not so fabulous that it can't be improved upon.

[gozur88]

>You know what, fuck the creditors. Let them feel what it's like to have no money coming in for a while.

I'll bet most of them already know. Start with nothing, work hard, save money for retirement, lend it to entitled students and have them not only stiff you, but also spit in your face.

That seems fair.

[throwaway2048]

most of the rentier class knows what its like to "start with nothing and work hard"?

[gozur88]

We're not talking about "the rentier class", though. We're talking about people who worked in a cubicle for the last 30 years and would like to be able to spend the money they saved.

[branchless]

This is what we need. Creditor haircut, then rates go up because there is real risk.

Let's hold the boomers+ to the fire. And the banks.

[hiram112]

I think a lot of the Boomers are going to get their comeuppance. At my age, my parents were on their third house. Most of my cohorts rent, and as I'm in a city where housing is now higher than before the crash, I wouldn't buy a home even if I could afford it. And I don't have school loans.

There are going to be some disappointed Boomers in the next decade, when looking to sell their main asset, upon discovering nobody can or will pay their inflated prices.

[zanny]

You are already wondering if debt will be repaid. It is very likely many of the larger student loans in the US for financial aid packages in the humanities will never fully be paid back and the holders of the debt will go to their grave with it. Other debt can and is being defaulted in bankruptcy - consider that even for people 45-55 the median net worth is only around 90k, and you can easily find yourself in way more debt than that amount.

Additionally, anyone making loans is already considering the risk of a debt jubilee when making loans now. After a debt jubilee of course the risk of recurrence is higher, but the risk assessment for banks would not be magnitudes different in the medium term.