Creditors need to know we won't repay the debt that the US Congress didn't approve for the Democrati

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chom...e_a_democracy/

Who should I cast my vote for?

mellownomad said:Look, nobody is stopping you from riding a bike everywhere if that's your thing.

Just send me a private message with a photo of the receipt after you buy the bike, along with a picture of yourself commuting to work on it...
Then maybe I'll consider doing the same.

Out of the 25 engineers on our team, I’m the only one who consistently commutes by bicycle.
But I can't exactly hand over a receipt because—get this—I found this bike in a dumpster five years ago!!😲😁😲
Some guy was moving apartments and tossed everything into the trash, including a bike with completely flat tires. I picked it up, swapped in some new tubes from $17 total.
As for my old bike, I took that out to Martha's Vineyard just to ride it there.

wearytrucker22 said:Personally, I say let's just ban all products coming from whatever country you work for. And what happens when the entire world goes bankrupt and falls into poverty? Where is your precious new country supposed to sell its goods and services then?

Every single capitalist would be absolutely screwed if someone actually managed to implement this model:
Money is never a blessing, whether you have it or not, according to Banjalučanka Maja Risović, who decided a few months back to join the Ubuntu community in Africa and live a life entirely free from monetary means.

The ideology goes like this: http://zvono-istine.org/kraj-novca-j...km-od-chicago/

Benjamin Taylor6 said:Out of the 25 engineers on our team, I’m the only one who consistently commutes by bicycle.
But I can't exactly hand over a receipt because—get this—I found this bike in a dumpster five years ago!!😲😁😲
Some guy was moving apartments and tossed everything into the trash, including a bike with completely flat tires. I picked it up, swapped in some new tubes from $17 total.
As for my old bike, I took that out to Martha's Vineyard just to ride it there.

Every single capitalist would be absolutely screwed if someone actually managed to implement this model:
Money is never a blessing, whether you have it or not, according to Banjalučanka Maja Risović, who decided a few months back to join the Ubuntu community in Africa and live a life entirely free from monetary means.

The ideology goes like this: http://zvono-istine.org/kraj-novca-j...km-od-chicago/

If you say so. 🤦 I mean, food alone won't cut it when you need, I don't know, someone to fix a broken tooth.

Someone swipes $300 from my account every single month, and I just don't report the theft. I have no idea why they’re following me; it's obvious to everyone that I'm innocent. If he didn't pay, then where did the money go? It’s just the same cycle over and over again.

wearytrucker22 said:Germany is rich because they didn't pay back their debts after WWI or WWII, and because the US pumped hundreds of trillions of dollars in grants into them. On top of that, they haven't paid up for the roughly $50 trillion to $100 trillion in damages caused across Europe.
Because of them, America lost about 400,000 people multiplied by €2 million, which totals €800 billion.
If not a single German had ever been born, America would probably have at least 10 to 12 million more people today. But German barbarism and hooliganism set us back so far we still haven't recovered.
Under American law, if you're driving a getaway car for a bank robbery and the robber kills someone, you as the driver get the exact same sentence as the shooter. If you hadn't been driving, they wouldn't have reached the location or had the chance to shoot in the first place.

I don't know, honestly... from what I gather, Warren Buffett made a killing on German bonds because Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election—and he promised to repay the debt. The brand party lost that one and said they wouldn't pay it back.

mellownomad said:Middle Eastern nations control the oil supply that powers our entire fleet of vehicles

Sent from my iPad using Reddit

And they’re basically the only reason why barter trade is impossible.

Processing costs remain a primary factor, alongside issues involving Venezuela (and South America in general), Russia, and several other nations.
Then there are the taxes and price fluctuations that vary from state to state, not to mention concessions—and I won't even start listing them all because the list goes on forever.
I exclusively use Colombian crude; it’s the cheapest option available, even more affordable than what comes from Saudi Arabia. A friend sends me the barrel count via the Bolivian consul, and then it gets refined at a repurposed facility in Sisk.
The conversion for charitable purposes is carried out under the protection of an anonymous high-ranking church official. They remain anonymous because they are merely humble shepherds and servants, nothing more.

Jonathan Bennett2 said:Processing costs remain a primary factor, alongside issues involving Venezuela (and South America in general), Russia, and several other nations.
Then there are the taxes and price fluctuations that vary from state to state, not to mention concessions—and I won't even start listing them all because the list goes on forever.
I exclusively use Colombian crude; it’s the cheapest option available, even more affordable than what comes from Saudi Arabia. A friend sends me the barrel count via the Bolivian consul, and then it gets refined at a repurposed facility in Sisk.
The conversion for charitable purposes is carried out under the protection of an anonymous high-ranking church official. They remain anonymous because they are merely humble shepherds and servants, nothing more.

I don't know what you're getting at. I'm talking about the inter-state arbitrage that's still happening, where the difference between states is settled via credit until that credit bubble eventually bursts. It's just that the banking vultures have made the whole thing incredibly complicated now. Back in the day, in America, things were handled much more simply.
You buy a Japanese car, the bank pays the Japanese manufacturer in USD or Euros, and later the bank buys back the currency from tourism companies and exporters. If there's a foreign exchange shortage, the parent bank just extends credit to the local branch, and bit by bit, the debt just keeps climbing.

Sometimes the 't' just slips away here and there
Well, what can I say? Life is good
It sounds better without that 't' anyway

wearytrucker22 said:And they’re basically the only reason why barter trade is impossible.

So, what's the next step in your logic—are you planning to commute to work by bicycle just to stay consistent?

mellownomad said:So, what's the next step in your logic—are you planning to commute to work by bicycle just to stay consistent?

I walk to the office, and in the summer, I just catch a breeze.

wearytrucker22 said:I walk to the office, and in the summer, I just catch a breeze.

If my interpretation of your stance is correct, you were essentially calling for a boycott of products from the very country where I reside.

Were you personally prepared to make any sacrifices to lead by example?

Regardless, we are drifting away from the core issue at hand....

mellownomad said:If my interpretation of your stance is correct, you were essentially calling for a boycott of products from the very country where I reside.

Were you personally prepared to make any sacrifices to lead by example?

Regardless, we are drifting away from the core issue at hand....

I don't owe anyone a single cent.
If anything, people owe me.
I still have a decent amount of cash sitting in various bank accounts in different currencies.
I also hold a significant portfolio of stocks.
Following my proposal would mean taking a hit personally; maybe I’d see some long-term gains through real estate later on.
But let's be real: the current global situation is just unsustainable. It's better for the world if we sacrifice the big American, German, Dutch, Danish, French, and British banks—along with their savings accounts—for the greater good. Otherwise, we're looking at a massive war on the horizon that will claim billions of lives this time around. Money isn't worth that many lives.

Thomas Piketty says Germany has never actually paid back its debts, so they really have no business lecturing anyone else about fiscal responsibility.
I’m genuinely worried that conservatives—specifically Germany—are going to tear apart Europe and kill off the whole idea of the European Union. It all stems from their shocking, total lack of historical perspective, according to Thomas Piketty. He laid it all out in a recent interview with The New York Times.

The author behind the massive hit *Capital in the 21st Century* sat down for an interview with *The New York Times* to weigh in on the current austerity measures being pushed across Europe. According to Thomas Piketty, the fiscal policies that Germany is forcing upon the rest of the European Union are a total disaster.

German history should carry a lot of weight for Americans today. Just look at the trajectory of national debt: there were times when the United Kingdom, Germany, and France all found themselves in positions similar to what Greece is facing now—some were actually even more heavily leveraged. The first major lesson here is that sovereign debt isn't some modern phenomenon. There have always been numerous ways to manage and pay down those debts, not just the single path that leaders in Berlin and Paris want you to believe is the only option, according to Thomas Piketty.

The "German economic miracle" wouldn't have been possible without debt forgiveness.

According to Thomas Piketty, Germany stands as the ultimate example of a nation that never truly settled its foreign debts in full. It’s a pattern that repeated itself following both World War I and World War II. Yet, there’s a certain irony to it all. As Piketty points out, Germany was frequently quick to demand payment from everyone else; they insisted on massive reparations from France following the Franco-Prussian War at the tail end of the 19th century.

When I hear Germans lecturing everyone else about their "moral obligation" to debt and how strictly they believe every cent must be repaid, I can't help but laugh. It’s honestly one big joke. Germany is a country that hasn't exactly been known for paying back what it owes. They really have no business trying to lecture other nations on fiscal responsibility. That's just how Thomas Piketty sees it.

He points out that history has essentially boiled down to two distinct ways of handling debt. You’ve got the brutal method currently being forced upon Greece, and then there's the much smoother, far more lenient approach that Germany used to favor.

Thomas Piketty lays out two ways to settle the bill. One way was demonstrated by the British Empire back in the 19th century, following those massive, expensive wars against Napoleon. It’s a slow burn—exactly the kind of sluggish approach they’re currently suggesting for Greece. Back then, the Empire paid off its debts through brutal fiscal discipline. It worked, sure, but it took forever. We're talking over a century where the British essentially shaved two or three percent off their entire economy just to clear the books. That’s more than they were actually putting into schools or education. The second method? It’s much faster. Germany proved that during the 20th century. It’s a three-pronged strategy: inflation, a specific tax on private wealth, and a partial debt jubilee.

Thomas Piketty argues that the so-called "German economic miracle" was actually built on the foundation of debt forgiveness—the very thing Germans are refusing to grant to Greece today.

After wrapping up World War II, Germany was buried under debt exceeding 200 percent of its GDP. Fast forward just ten years, and that figure had plummeted—public debt was sitting at less than 20 percent of GDP. France pulled off a nearly identical feat during that same window. We wouldn't stand a chance of hitting those kinds of numbers that quickly if we stuck strictly to the "fiscal discipline" everyone tries to force on Greece today. Instead, both nations utilized a different playbook, one where debt recovery is actually one of the three core components. Just look back at the London Agreement of 1953; they wiped out 60 percent of Germany's debt and restructured their domestic obligations entirely. That’s how you actually move the needle, says Thomas Piketty.

If we had told the Germans they refused to own up to their mistakes, they’d still be footing the bill today.

So, there’s this piece in The New York Times where a journalist argues that the decision to forgive German debts was basically an admission that the massive reparations imposed after World War I helped trigger World War II. Well, Thomas Piketty isn't buying it. He thinks that whole line of reasoning is complete nonsense. According to him, wiping those debts wasn't some panicked reaction to history repeating itself; it was a calculated, rational move—both politically and economically. It was about giving the German people a chance to actually stop looking backward and finally start focusing on the future.

We can't honestly expect younger generations to spend decades footing the bill for their parents' blunders. Look, the Greek government definitely screwed up big time—they were basically cooking the books until 2009. But the younger generation in Greece shouldn't be held accountable for those ancestral mistakes any more than young Germans were back in the 50s and 60s. We have to look forward. The whole foundation of Europe is built on forgiving debt and making investments in the future, not on some concept of eternal penance. We can't afford to forget that.

Responding to a report from The New York Times about how many Germans believe the Greeks still haven't learned their lesson—and apparently want to keep spending beyond their means—Thomas Piketty fires back: "If we had told you Americans back in the 50s that you hadn't properly dealt with your mistakes, you'd still be paying off those debts today. Luckily, we were smart enough not to do that." He also points out that Germany isn't just refusing to show Greece any mercy; they're actually profiting from the struggle by lending them money at standard commercial interest rates.

"Debt restructuring is inevitable for several countries in Europe"

According to Thomas Piketty, kicking Greece out of the eurozone would trigger an agonizing era that would essentially result in "sacrificing the European social model, its democracy, and even its very civilization on the altar of conservative, irrational austerity politics." Rather than that, Thomas Pikety proposes a different way to handle the current crisis.

"We need a summit on all European debts, similar to what we had after World War II. Debt restructuring, not just for Greece but for several nations across Europe, is unavoidable. We have already wasted six months in completely non-transparent negotiations with Athens. The Eurogroup's idea that Greece will achieve a 4 percent budget surplus and pay off its debts over 30 to 40 years is still being floated. According to them, there will be a one percent surplus in 2015, two percent in 2016, and then three and a half percent in 2017. That is absolute madness! It’s never going to happen. And yet, we just keep delaying this inevitable debate," says Thomas Piketty.

Once debt forgiveness is finally on the table, Thomas Piketty argues that a new European institution should be established to set maximum allowable budget deficits, preventing a massive spike in debt ever again. He suggests creating a committee within the European Parliament composed of representatives from national parliaments to oversee this. For Thomas Piketty, the bottom line is that decisions in Europe must be made democratically, rather than through brute force exerted from Berlin.

wearytrucker22 said:I don't owe anyone a single cent.
If anything, people owe me.
I still have a decent amount of cash sitting in various bank accounts in different currencies.
I also hold a significant portfolio of stocks.
Following my proposal would mean taking a hit personally; maybe I’d see some long-term gains through real estate later on.
But let's be real: the current global situation is just unsustainable. It's better for the world if we sacrifice the big American, German, Dutch, Danish, French, and British banks—along with their savings accounts—for the greater good. Otherwise, we're looking at a massive war on the horizon that will claim billions of lives this time around. Money isn't worth that many lives.

You would likely speak differently if you were the one being asked to surrender part of your own savings to bail out Greece.

Besides, you keep drifting away from the actual topic.
I fail to see how your statement relates to my comment. You advocate for others to stop importing Middle Eastern products—essentially oil—but when I ask if you are personally prepared to live without using it, I get two or three nonsensical answers that dodge the question entirely..

It is the same thing here; you mention your savings, yet suggest that Germans, Dutchmen, Danes, Frenchmen, and Englishmen should forfeit their savings just to prevent some kind of war..

Please, at least try to separate the part where you call on others to do exactly what you aren't willing to do yourself.😁

As the saying goes: put your money where your mouth is.

By the way, Germany has paid off its debts.
That is exactly the kind of socialist mindset I am talking about. Beyond wanting someone else to give up their claims, they would also want someone else to hand over their savings (very much in the style of Piketty).

mellownomad said:You would likely speak differently if you were the one being asked to surrender part of your own savings to bail out Greece.

Besides, you keep drifting away from the actual topic.
I fail to see how your statement relates to my comment. You advocate for others to stop importing Middle Eastern products—essentially oil—but when I ask if you are personally prepared to live without using it, I get two or three nonsensical answers that dodge the question entirely..

It is the same thing here; you mention your savings, yet suggest that Germans, Dutchmen, Danes, Frenchmen, and Englishmen should forfeit their savings just to prevent some kind of war..

Please, at least try to separate the part where you call on others to do exactly what you aren't willing to do yourself.😁

As the saying goes: put your money where your mouth is.

By the way, Germany has paid off its debts.
That is exactly the kind of socialist mindset I am talking about. Beyond wanting someone else to give up their claims, they would also want someone else to hand over their savings (very much in the style of Piketty).

Well, those people—the Germans, Dutchmen, Danes, Frenchmen, and Englishmen—actually built up those savings through the profits they made by exporting goods to Greece. So, it isn't really about them giving up their "savings," but rather sharing a portion of the earnings they generated.
It’s a lot like when you shop at Walmart and they give you reward vouchers; those vouchers give you the right to buy things or get a discount on certain products.
In that scenario, Walmart isn't sacrificing its savings; it’s just distributing a slice of its revenue. You could technically call it savings, but in a standard customer-retailer relationship, this is just how things work.
Or think about going to a restaurant; you’ll often find yourself being offered a complimentary drink after a heavy lunch, a little something the restaurant earned back through your patronage.

Quincy:

By the way, Germany has already paid off its debts. That’s exactly the kind of socialism I’m talking about. Beyond wanting others to waive their claims, they also want others to sacrifice their savings, much like what Piketty describes. Germany

Germany never actually repaid the real value of its war reparations, if you look at what Piketty points out.
When it became clear that Germany couldn't meet its obligations, the debt was restructured and the repayment period was extended, meaning they didn't settle their final obligations until 2010.

On top of the fact that part of the debt was essentially forgiven, the US dollar has lost significant value since 1953. What $1 could buy you back then might cost you $8 in 2015.

Yet, the debt was settled at face value.

But all of this gets conveniently forgotten. People drone on about losing savings, the obligation to pay the last Euro, financial discipline, and all that.
They ignore the fact that the Eurozone nations took on Greece's debts from private banks. By forcing Greece to pay, they are essentially trying to collect what was already paid to private banks—banks that pocketed the interest, handed out bonuses, and distributed profits, while leaving the taxpayers and savers, whose money was used to buy those Greek bonds, to deal with the fallout.

It’s also overlooked that Germany itself owes $5,217,014 million and enjoys much more favorable interest rates on its debt compared to Greece. In effect, Germany earns a spread of about 3-4% on the interest difference from the Greek debt.

This pattern has been repeated over and over. Without being properly refuted or challenged, people forget this sequence of events and who is truly responsible for the situation in Greece. It wasn't just the Greeks; it was their politicians who took on debt to serve their own interests.

Actually, Greece has a smaller budget deficit (3.5% of GDP) than the US (which we can compare to our own fiscal struggles), and without credit obligations, they are closer to meeting the European Union's requirements for deficit limits.

I wonder what everyone will have to say when our own "creditors" come knocking and force us to live like ascetics, just as they are doing to Greece now.
Maybe then we'll see things differently, or perhaps it's time to organize quickly and demand that our politicians stop saddling us with more debt, while many continue to enjoy perks funded by that very borrowing.
If we believe that all interest-bearing debt must be paid back by any means necessary, then maybe it's time to take to the streets and challenge the Government that keeps borrowing for us, especially since the debt is approaching 100% of our GDP.

mellownomad said:You would likely speak differently if you were the one being asked to surrender part of your own savings to bail out Greece.

Besides, you keep drifting away from the actual topic.
I fail to see how your statement relates to my comment. You advocate for others to stop importing Middle Eastern products—essentially oil—but when I ask if you are personally prepared to live without using it, I get two or three nonsensical answers that dodge the question entirely..

It is the same thing here; you mention your savings, yet suggest that Germans, Dutchmen, Danes, Frenchmen, and Englishmen should forfeit their savings just to prevent some kind of war..

Please, at least try to separate the part where you call on others to do exactly what you aren't willing to do yourself.😁

As the saying goes: put your money where your mouth is.

By the way, Germany has paid off its debts.
That is exactly the kind of socialist mindset I am talking about. Beyond wanting someone else to give up their claims, they would also want someone else to hand over their savings (very much in the style of Piketty).

If everyone agrees to chip in, then fine, I'll do it too. Honestly, it's not a bad idea: just hike fuel prices by a dollar per gallon across the entire European Union and use that to pay off all the debts in Greece, America, Portugal, and those Eastern countries.
Or, we could just print more money and let the Federal Reserve buy up government bonds to extend maturities to, say, 20 years. That would be the fairest way to handle this; the poor wouldn't even notice, while the wealthy would take a hit, but they're capable enough to recover. As for the Germans, Dutchmen, Danes, Frenchmen, and Englishmen giving up their savings? I'd rather they lose their savings than the future of their children and grandchildren.

I’m just saying, there’s no way Andrew Barrett4 is going to walk away from those hard-earned dollars he worked so damn hard for, just to throw them down the drain for the sake of some issue over in Greece. 😁

I suppose I should try to give you all a little perspective here. 😬

Andrew Barrett4 said:I’m just saying, there’s no way Andrew Barrett4 is going to walk away from those hard-earned dollars he worked so damn hard for, just to throw them down the drain for the sake of some issue over in Greece. 😁

I suppose I should try to give you all a little perspective here. 😬

Nobody is going to ask for your opinion. Go read the actual laws for once. What happens when today's kids decide they aren't interested in funding pensions or paying for the healthcare of elderly grandparents? They took out massive loans and stuffed their pockets with gold while we were left holding the bag—well, if they want us to foot the bill now, they can just deal with it on their own.

Benjamin Taylor6 said:Out of the 25 engineers on our team, I’m the only one who consistently commutes by bicycle.
But I can't exactly hand over a receipt because—get this—I found this bike in a dumpster five years ago!!😲😁😲
Some guy was moving apartments and tossed everything into the trash, including a bike with completely flat tires. I picked it up, swapped in some new tubes from $17 total.
As for my old bike, I took that out to Martha's Vineyard just to ride it there.

Every single capitalist would be absolutely screwed if someone actually managed to implement this model:
Money is never a blessing, whether you have it or not, according to Banjalučanka Maja Risović, who decided a few months back to join the Ubuntu community in Africa and live a life entirely free from monetary means.

The ideology goes like this: http://zvono-istine.org/kraj-novca-j...km-od-chicago/

Living without money sounds fine in theory, but how does one accumulate—or rather, preserve—the value of past labor? If I perform work today, does it simply vanish into a collective pool, trusting that the community will return the favor whenever I might need it? It feels uncomfortably close to socialism. And in practice, that usually translates to inefficiency and penalizing high achievers to subsidize those with less capability.
The issue isn't the currency itself. The issue lies with the people who claim an exclusive right to print it without contributing any nominal value, while constantly flooding the market with more. This process devalues the labor we've already stored in our savings, effectively eroding both the cash in our pockets and the balances in our bank accounts right now.