NORTON META TAG

09 November 2012

These Guys Want to Buy Up Your Debt and Set You Free 9NOV12

THERE is scriptural basis for the concept of a Year of Jubilee, and there is still debate whether it is the 49th or 50th year, a Sabbatical year when debt is forgiven and property returned to the original owners (though slaves were to be freed after 7 years in a year of Jubilee). This is a great concept by the Occupy Wall Street movement, and it would be really great if the religious communities joined in to relieve the suffering of too many in this country. Check this out, watch the video, and if you want to try to sort out the ancient laws concerning the Jubilee Years check out Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_%28biblical%29
Rolling Jubilee
Going viral today almost as fast as a good pepper spray video is the latest idea from Occupy Wall Street: the Rolling Jubilee, a project to buy up and zero out people's debts. David "How To Sharpen Pencils" Rees explains:
Now OWS is launching the ROLLING JUBILEE, a program that has been in development for months. OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans, etc.) in order to forgive it. As a test run, we spent $500, which bought $14,000 of distressed debt. We then ERASED THAT DEBT. (If you're a debt broker, once you own someone's debt you can do whatever you want with it—traditionally, you hound debtors to their grave trying to collect. We're playing a different game. A MORE AWESOME GAME.)
Over at Slate, Matthew Yglesias offers limited praise:
That said, almost all charitable undertakings are organized around some gimmick or other that serves as a focal point and helps get people interested. If the pecularity of the distressed debt situation and the concept of a jubilee happens to inspire people and motivate them to be more generous with their time and money than would otherwise be the case, this is a perfectly good idea.
But ultimately, the Rolling Jubilee could do much more than inspire charity. Spending $500 to cancel $14,000 in debt is an amazing bang for the buck—or, seen differently, an amazing illustration of how the financial system that we all bailed out now enslaves many of us. Even if the Rolling Jubilee becomes wildly successful, it probably won't cancel out more than a tiny fraction of our trillions worth of personal debts. Its value is as a devastating political statement: Debt is cheap, except when it's owned by the banks.
Watch...

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