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Global Debt
Hans Christian Anderson saw it. In the Emperor‚s New Clothes he saw the
emperor and a whole population gulled by a smart tailor and in the grip
of a collective hallucination. It took the simple truthfulness of a
child to say, „But he‚s nude! The Emperor has no clothes!‰ Oh, for that
child in our present situation!
„But,‰ you say, „is this supposed to be an article on global debt? What
possible correlation can there be with a Danish fairy tale?‰ The peoples
of the earth (including those of the 'great satan' USA) are struggling
to pay astronomical sums in interest on all kinds of debts, private,
national and international with the result being that approximately four
hundred families own half of the earth. But the hallucination of all
hallucinations is that we struggle to repay loans which never existed,
even repaying multiple compound interest on them, repaying them with our
commodities, and our very real lives‚ labours.
Some people somewhere discovered the tailor‚s secret of all time when
they learnt to invent money from absolutely nothing by merely writing
it, printing it or, today, keying it into a computer. However, a loan of
nothing isn't anything; it cannot be repaid. Interest on nothing, even
compound interest, is nothing. At most we might owe some bits of paper
of dubious quality or some digital pulses down a telephone line; I doubt
it, but if so it could be arranged. But we, the earth's peoples, are
owed our lives, our labours and our commodities; how can they ever repay
that? They can't and we would be fools to hope for it as we have been
fools to have believed (credo) in their credit, for this was the
ultimate con trick of all time, to con an entire planet!
Kind liberal public servants such as Peter Sutherland call for
forgiveness of the debt. Indeed how kind they are! But why do we need
forgiveness? Is this some new religion where the only sin is debt? What
about the old religions where usury was anathema? We do have the choice
of forgiving them for robbing a planet. For myself, I do not care
whether they forgive the debt or not. What debt are they talking about?
There is no such debt. To think about it is to admit to psychosis. To
repudiate it is a waste of energy and an engagement in a dialect that is
fruitless. How often its apparent repudiators have merely sought the
profitable job of administering it. Organising revolutions to overthrow
it is like trying to overthrow something that isn't there, and so by
that very act one has affirmed it and guaranteed its continuance. How
often the revolutionaries come to sit in the palace.
One must abandon hallucinations and cling to realities. Commodities are
realities and thus barter is a reality. Gold and silver are realities.
Our lives and our labours are realities.
In the open rent-free markets of the future when the invisible emperors
of this age of ours come naked with wheelbarrows full of valueless
paper, no one will sell their wares for such junk; but I hope at least
we have the charity to pass on to them some of our old clothes to cover
their nakedness.