Debt Repudiation
What are my choices?
Awakening to Options,
What holds "debt slaves" in their servitude?
"I owe my soul to the company store."
The lack of any alternative is what holds individuals, families, communities and nations in debt-peonage.
What if such an alternative were to be born into the world of global commerce?
The American and allied militaries have destroyed nations and rulers which tried to sell oil for anything but dollars, or to create a real alternative system.
Iraq and Libya are examples. There are others.
Western military alliances like NATO have destroyed or severely punished any nascent threats to $US hegemony until now. Russia is a direct military competitor to US/NATO and China is a direct economic competitor, and they are in alliance, driven there by the hostile actions of "the west", militarily and financially.
During the "Cold War" era, many countries ostracized by the US were supported by Russia, notably Cuba. This was one of the factors which collapsed the economy of the USSR. Both Russia and China have had collapses, recovered and rebuilt along nationalist market-based economies, with rapidly rising living standards for their citizens. They are not perfect, of course, but this contrasts sharply with the west, where real wages for most working people have been stagnant or falling for 45 years or so.
Debt has filled in the gaps between paycheck-to-paycheck jobs, credit card debt, mortgage refinancing debt. you have to keep food on the table, and gas in the tank.
What if you could start over, without debt, and the house would be yours, if you claimed it as yours, under an alternative system? Would you switch systems? What if the old system threatened to kill you if you failed to keep paying? What if that threat became less credible as other neighbors survived, and were helped by members of the new system.
Would you opt into the new system and nationalize the oil wells and lithium mines, untegrate into the new system, and forget those EZ-monthly-payments?
Exclusive: Russian geo-economics Tzar Sergey Glazyev introduces the new global financial systemThe world’s new monetary system, underpinned by a digital currency, will be backed by a basket of new foreign currencies and natural resources. And it will liberate the Global South from both western debt and IMF-induced austerity. The Cradle: Michael Hudson specifically asks that if this new system enables nations in the Global South to suspend dollarized debt and is based on the ability to pay (in foreign exchange), can these loans be tied to either raw materials or, for China, tangible equity ownership in the capital infrastructure financed by foreign non-dollar credit?
Glazyev: Transition to the new world economic order will likely be accompanied by systematic refusal to honor obligations in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. In this respect, it will be no different from the example set by the countries issuing these currencies who thought it appropriate to steal foreign exchange reserves of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia to the tune of trillions of dollars. Since the US, Britain, EU, and Japan refused to honor their obligations and confiscated the wealth of other nations which was held in their currencies, why should other countries be obliged to pay them back and to service their loans?
In any case, participation in the new economic system will not be constrained by the obligations in the old one. Countries of the Global South can be full participants of the new system regardless of their accumulated debts in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. Even if they were to default on their obligations in those currencies, this would have no bearing on their credit rating in the new financial system. Nationalization of extraction industry, likewise, would not cause a disruption. Further, should these countries reserve a portion of their natural resources for the backing of the new economic system, their respective weight in the currency basket of the new monetary unit would increase accordingly, providing that nation with larger currency reserves and credit capacity. In addition, bilateral swap lines with trading partner countries would provide them with adequate financing for co-investments and trade financing.
Eleni sends this article from American conservative, Ukrainian expert, and resident of Ukraine, George Eliason. There is a lot of value in here, and he was the odd attendee at a March conference about Ukraine in Moscow, to which he had subscribed last year. It was remarkably comfortable for him. There are many facts and insights here. I will focus on this one. The Ukraine needed war for economic reasons. Certainly the collective west also does. In history failing economic systems that need war (like European colonialism in WW-1 and WW-2) may be superseded by more efficient economic systems during and after the war. Glazyev discussed that above. The massing of US/NATO supplied Ukrainian military forces, and their artillery bombardment of the Donbass, preparatory to invading Donetsk and Luhansk (Lugansk), did finally force Russia into a pre-emptive attack, which set these western plans in motion. What’s catching and should be foremost in policymakers’ minds is most of the information describing Ukraine’s imminent crash which led to the decision to go to war comes from Ukrainian experts inside and outside the Zelensky administration. The tie-in to western economies’ gas prices and inflation pressure becomes patently obvious as a prop for Ukraine to lean on keeping its citizens from blaming Kyiv’s bad economic and energy policies.
Without the war, industry, business, and even civil government structures were grinding to a halt. Ukraine’s top experts predicted the situation would crescendo in June-July 2022. US President Joe Biden and Ukraine’s Zelensky needed to push the war and scapegoat Russia as the cause of Ukraine’s economic crash which is the single major factor why Zelensky ordered a Croatia scenario attack slated to begin in March.
(Like when Obama called all the bankers together and forced them to take free-loans from Washington or-else.)Pentagon Asks Top 8 US Arms Makers to Meet on Ukraine
US weapons makers are expected to reap long-term benefits from the war
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/04/12/pentagon-asks-top-8-us-arms-makers-to-meet-on-ukraine/
Observing Groupthink (pictured with carrots in Yoakum)
Great post!