Should we just excuse all international debt?

Sorta, there's two camps on the China debt problem.

Camp 1) Selling debt to China damages your sovereignty because it gives Chinese powers a way into your politicians. Not so great. Therefore you should somehow minimise that type of debt by making primary sale of debt to be only to select people (read as: just Americans).

Camp 2) China is selling you debt for cheap, so why not take advantage of the money? The investments certainly pay more than the interest rate that China is demanding so it's a profitable exchange for both parties.

But mainly, you can't just "excuse" debt you owe to someone... it's the other way around. You can excuse someone from paying you back but you can't be "Hi can haz money plz?". Then get the money and go "K, me not paying you back now."

Good luck having any kind of international trade after that.

I wouldn't be suggesting it if there wasn't the possibility that our existing debt situation will destroy international trade anyways.

America should secretly create a new currency and set up a changeover for everything internal or essential, print loads and loads of their current dollars so that inflation for it goes through the roof, and then pay off their debt to China with the now-worthless currency. Genius!

And of course, destroy their own economy through hyperinflation in the process. Is it worth it?

No, no, you see, they've secretly switched over to this new currency, but China doesn't know, and so can be paid off with USD! Don't you get it?

..ah. How brilliant. Yes, it would totally work!

We'll call it.. Fun money! It's brilliant!

Can I be the car? I never get to be the fuckin car.

I'm cool with it if I get to be the boat. Just don't give me the shoe.

edited 20th Sep '11 8:05:09 AM by SavageHeathen

I always played the dog or the horseman as a kid, because I couldn't quite figure out how an inanimate object would be buying and selling stuff and going around the streets. I guess I grew attached. So doggy is mine.

On a different note, I don't think we should just excuse all international debt.

Cannon here, go figure.

Battleship, or cavalry if that's already taken.

~eyes Savage~

You took my piece.

Yeah, I actually like the "secret money switch! haha, losers!" plan, because of sheer For the Lulz value, but it would probably collapse everyone else' economy, which through cause-effect will get us.

Also, I don't think the US Government could ever coordinate such a thing in secret...

@USAF: if only americans are allowed to buy government bonds, then the rich pretty much LITERAL Ly own the nation.

True. I'd rather have it be people in this country who we can smack if they get stupid, compared to superpowers half a world away that have nukes...

Well it'd be rich of someone's country. It's not cheap buying the bonds on the primary market. Not everyone can just shell out tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy them. Secondary market is open to everyone, though, I'm not clear on the regulations in some countries (like Canada) that restricts foreign ownership down to just a few percent.

What's the point of having it be a small percent?

I suppose we could just limit it to individual citizens (so, no organizations) and limit the number of bonds each individual person could buy, while simultaneously selling them at a cheaper rate (so poorer people could buy them).

I'm talking more from a theoretical logical perspective than an economic perspective here, though, so I don't know if that would actually work or not...

Well not a cheaper rate, just breaking it up more. Technically the poor can buy into government debt... just only on the secondary market. The problem with the poor... is that they're poor and have no money.

The point of locking it to domestic debt is to have more control over how you handle it. If you can't meet debt obligations to foreign entities, you're pretty SOL. If you're not able to meet it domestically, you can... restructure your debt in imaginative ways. Which is that you'd be redistributing wealth in some way in that case.

The problem with reverse forgiveness on debt, is that the West cannot forgive it's own obligations to other people. We spent their resources, we need to pay them back.

...so my argument that we need to tell China to fuck off was right?

As I said, we should just focus on paying all the foreign debtors back and then go "cheers, bitches, no more American debt for you." But like Erock noted, that would be much too smart for the US Government to consider as a good option...

Welll that's not exactly "fuck off" when you pay them back though. It's just "I'm not going to get into idiotic arrangements in the future". I mean if I were China and you offered me this retarded deal, I'd just shrug my shoulders and go "Okay, that's your problem."

No, I'm pretty sure China would take it as a big "fuck off."

Not exactly, they've already been aggressively buying Euro-backed debt instead of USD-backed debt. They'll probably still continue to buy US debt and even if their government gives it up wholly, which they seemed to have signalled that's what they want to do in the future once an opportunity arises (ie. not buying your debt won't collapse your entire country), Chinese private investors will flock to it. In that case, you can do whatever you feel like, the Chinese government won't be directly affected.

It's not like China feels miffed they can't buy Canadian debt. Trade doubles every 5 years and is already starting to overtake trade with the USA (which is getting hammered both by an asshole government bent on protectionism and the weakened US economy).

Since this thread went static:

• China is revealed to be suffering from massive wage payment problems.
• Greece is seeing its government collapse over disagreements on how to handle its debt, even after 50% of that debt was excused.
• Italy is close to a default.
• Occupy Wall Street has begun breaking through the media blackout.

Does a reset of the global economic system sound any better now?

@ Taoist

It doesn't. You're Canadian right? It's like CRTC. It's totally freaking broken but eliminating it would be even worse.

I think we should think about replacing it in phases and doing small parts of it at a time but resetting the entire system at once would be problematic. Too much hurt at once can mean a nuclear war and that is not something that is easily recovered from.

CRTC? That is an interesting analogy.

Anyways, it just feels the more and more I read economic news, the more and more the whole mess looks ready to implode on its own. I mean, the CRTC sucks, but I don't expect our telecommunications infrastructure to fail in the next two years. My concern is that a clean break and reset may be our only option of transition.

Or governments could run surpluses to repay the debt. Greece's taxes are criminally low.