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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World_debt
To me, the whole issue is fraught with complexities. I would consider it highly unfair to simply cancel the debt. Just because a country isn't in a lot of debt, it doesn't mean that it doesn't need financial help. How would you feel if you had scraped through for ages and finally paid off a bank loan, just to hear that the bank is cancelling all debts?
However, the position that 'it's their own damn fault' doesn't hold water either. The money, in many cases, was borrowed by previous governments. Just because those leaders couldn't plan ahead, should the current inhabitants be burdened with an unpayable debt?
Actually, that brings to mind a question I have: if your parents amassed debts, would you inherit them after their death? That seems particularly unfair to me.
Your thoughts welcome.
To me, the whole issue is fraught with complexities. I would consider it highly unfair to simply cancel the debt. Just because a country isn't in a lot of debt, it doesn't mean that it doesn't need financial help. How would you feel if you had scraped through for ages and finally paid off a bank loan, just to hear that the bank is cancelling all debts?
However, the position that 'it's their own damn fault' doesn't hold water either. The money, in many cases, was borrowed by previous governments. Just because those leaders couldn't plan ahead, should the current inhabitants be burdened with an unpayable debt?
Actually, that brings to mind a question I have: if your parents amassed debts, would you inherit them after their death? That seems particularly unfair to me.
Your thoughts welcome.
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Yes. Who else should pay for it?
Many of the leaders planned ahead all too well. Most of the money remains in Swiss bank accounts under names like Dr Miriam Abacha, whom I presume has been emailing you recently.
Giving them money isn't the solution anyway. Money gets embezzled and destroys local businesses. Throwing rice at them only undermines the existing farm industry---farms who often refuse to irrigate because irrigation is considered `women's work'.
We've got a bajillion unemployed civil engineers. Send them instead.
> if your parents amassed debts, would you inherit them after their death?
Yes. Who else pays for it?
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Well, according to the protestors, we should. At £3 per person per year for ten years, britain could paid off every debt owed to it. And you can't claim that we can't afford it; that's what, one-and-a-half pints per year? Whereas in third-world countries the same amount is a lot more valuable.
> > if your parents amassed debts, would you inherit them after their death?
> Yes. Who else pays for it?
Well in that case, I would have thought the bank would. Quite a few debts, after all, end in insolvency, at which point the bank seizes whatever it can and cuts its losses. If a bank is foolish enough to lend money to somebody who doesn't plan to pay it back, who should suffer: them, or somebody who happens to share 50% of his DNA with the debtor? You of all people should sympathise with that, surely?
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When it comes to heavily indebted countries, I think some historical background is useful. We fucked these countries over quite deliberately, to put it shortly, and now we have a duty to make recompense in so far as we can. It used to be that UK companies could set illegal bribes in foriegn countries against tax, as a cost of doing business, for fuck's sake. And there's also the appallingly broken policies of the IMF and World Bank over the past 25 years, when they actually managed to decrease growth to zero in the countries least able to escape their clutches.
Also, remember Argentina? They defaulted entirely, and are now doing much better. Owners of their bonds may at some point get five pence in the pound. People can go bankrupt and start again, and now it looks like countries can, too; that's not what debt relief is - debt relief is us paying on their behalf. The longer we wait before doing anything, the more likely it is that more countries will default.
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The 'contract binding on a third party' was also my argument against many of the third-world debts. If a previous government loaned money from the world bank, and then collapsed or was overthrown, surely the same situation applies, where the institution that borrowed the money no longer exists.
Did Argentina use this reasoning when it decided to default, I wonder?
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Yes indeed.
UK law does have a provision for cancelling unfair contracts, so extending that provision to protect other countries would be a good start.
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Wasn't about to. Just that it's not necessarily our job to do so. I owe the Royal Bank of Scotland over a thousand pounds. I suspect your father could afford to pay that off for me. That doesn't mean he should.
> If a bank is foolish enough to lend money to somebody who doesn't plan to pay it back, who should suffer
It's not a question of DNA, it's a question of legal next-of-kin. And in the case of national debts, they're not owed by whichever (corrupt) administration borrowed the money, but by the nation they currently represent.
Insolvency is something I've never understood, and I suspect you'd be better off listening to
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It's a little less arbitrary in this case. Our country is the lender, hence it is up to us, ultimately, whether we maintain the debt or not.
> It's not a question of DNA, it's a question of legal next-of-kin.
But as
> And in the case of national debts, they're not owed by whichever (corrupt) administration borrowed the money, but by the nation they currently represent.
There's something very wrong with that system.
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Or, alternatively; how would I feel if I was forced to starve because a country who could (albeit marginally) afford to feed its citizens was going to piss and whine about how unfair life is?
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Besides which the analogy is flawed. Even if debts were inherited in full under the law of Britain or other western nations this is unlikely to lead to the starvation of millions as we see at the moment. Also, much of the of the debt was incurred over 100 years ago (even the Bible only says "yea, unto the third generation"!) and was at the time of colonial puppet governments for things which were for the benefit of the colonists not the locals. The money paid for missionary schools, health care without contraception or education, conversion of local agrarian economies to "national" (ie world powers arbitrarily carving up continents like so much birthday cake without regard to religious, tribal or ethnic concerns) cash crop models, all so these powers could drain resources from the countries in an arterial flow which is X times more disgusting and a million times more fatal. (No exaggeration. An under-estimate, if anything.)
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Who is talking about simply throwing money at the problem? Proven economic models for providing third world relief have been around for 25 years or more. Things like "teach a man to fish" etc.
Education is where its at. We sent them a bajillion engineers a hundred years ago and the engineers used up their resources (If they're unemployed who's going to feed them? Clothe them? House them? Pay them? Not us, according to you...) and built stuff that was useful for us, not them. Did anyone think about teaching them to be their own engineers? Or educating them that women's equality is not right because we say it is but instead showing them how it can work to their own economic advantage? No, instead we should leave them poor and ignorant and because they have corrupt leaders who 9 times out of ten we sponsor and support we can safely blame them for it and ignore the problem.
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We're not. People on this thread are attempting to justify being born into debt and being forced to work it off under the economic models of the debtee. Serfdom, anyone?
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Well, those would be better still.
Main problem would be getting banks to agree to that, I guess.
A reduction in interest rates is the sort of thing it would be harder for banks to say no to, which is why I suggest it - more likely to get an immediate response which would reduce suffering now.
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