Forge of Creation

Finance Bailout is a Sham

Con­gress is going to bail out the ras­cals at taxpayer’s expense. The amount may change, but the intent is obvious. After years of using our savings to leve­rage their pro­fits, the gravy train has gone off the rails and they want us all to pay for the resul­ting dead horse. Why not dec­lare amnesty on ALL debt? Turns out the result would be no worse if they did. Of course, it would turn out much bet­ter if they didn’t. The mar­ket must be free to fail or it is des­ti­ned to be unsup­por­ta­ble. I found a really eye-opening paper on this very sub­ject and would like to share it with you at the jump.

Appa­rently, the gods had a good grasp of finance. In old Assy­rian and Baby­lo­nian tra­di­tion, every fifty years all debts were for­gi­ven. This inc­lu­ded mone­tary as well as social debts such as ser­vi­tude and sla­very. Later, the Hebrews exten­ded this to every seven years, but limi­ted the kinds of debts that would be for­gi­ven. The prin­ci­ple was that the con­cept of usury was inhe­rently fla­wed and could not be eli­mi­na­ted without seriously crim­ping trade. The Jubi­lee was inten­ded to perio­di­cally reset the rela­tionship bet­ween the rich and poor so that the rich wouldn’t become so power­ful and the poor wouldn’t become so hope­less. The con­cept wor­ked well for thou­sands of years. Only within the last few cen­tu­ries has debt become an absolute.

I cha­llenge anyone who thinks our govern­ment has our best inte­rests at heart or who thinks the current finan­cial sys­tem is the best sys­tem for a free mar­ket, to read this for them­sel­ves and cha­llenge it’s assertions. We may have some com­mon ground to discuss. Here are some exerpts:

from about 2500 to perhaps 300 BC, Baby­lo­nian and other Near Eas­tern rulers kept their citi­zens free and pre­ser­ved their landhol­dings by annu­lling per­so­nal and agra­rian debts when they took the throne – a true “tax holi­day” – or when eco­no­mic or mili­tary con­di­tions warran­ted a gene­ral Clean Slate.  These Clean Sla­tes were adop­ted lite­rally, almost word for word, in the Bibli­cal Jubi­lee Year if Levi­ti­cus 25. Even the same Hebrew word, deror, was used for the Baby­lo­nian andu­ra­rum proc­lai­med by rulers of Hammurapi’s dynasty from 2000 to 1600 BC. We ignore the fact that in the very first ser­mon that Jesus gave, in Naza­reth (Luke 4:14–30), he unro­lled the scroll of Isaiah 61 and pro­mi­sed that he had come “to proc­laim the Year of the Lord,” the Jubi­lee Year.

Han­del arran­ged the first per­for­mance of The Mes­siah as a bene­fit to raise money to bail deb­tors out of Irish deb­tors’ pri­sons, and every year the ora­to­rio was repea­ted for that cha­ri­ta­ble pur­pose. Mar­tin Luther war­ned about the mathe­ma­tics of com­pound inte­rest as the mons­ter Cacus, devou­ring all. Yet Luther’s denun­cia­tions of usury are exc­lu­ded from his collec­ted works in English, and are avai­la­ble in this lan­guage only in Vol. III of Marx’s Capi­tal and Book III of his Theo­ries of Sur­plus Value.

Thin­king the Unthin­ka­ble: A Debt Write Down, and Jubi­lee Year Clean Slate from  http://www.globalresearch.ca/