This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Undebtors: Sworn Enemies Of The Vampires Of Debt
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it.
We hear a lot about debtors, and very little about undebtors. I define an undebtor as an individual or entity that has sworn off debt or considers debt a necessary evil that must be paid off as quickly as possible regardless of the sacrifices required to do so.
Undebtors are created by these conditions:
1. People with cultural/familial values that eschew/fear debt.
2. People who have been crushed by debt in the past and refuse to repeat the experience.
3. People who recognize debt as the status quo's favored instrument of oppression, control and exploitation.
4. People who understand that paying off debt is the easiest way to earn a zero-risk significant return on one's money.
If you pay off a 12% credit card, that's the equivalent of earning 12% on your money.
There's no mystery as to the low profile of undebtors in the mainstream media: undebtors are the equivalent of the cross to the vampire-parasites peddling debt.How can banks and other financial parasites make money off the undebtors? They can't, and therein lies the problem for the status quo, which lives off the blood of debt extracted from debt-serfs.
The profits skimmed off debt fuel the speculative gambles that benefit Wall Street, and fund the politico lackeys and toadies who enforce the power of banks and Wall Street.
Debt also funds insurance companies and pension funds. Remember, every student loan dragging a starving student into servitude is owned by a pension fund or insurer as a solid, high-yield asset and every subprime auto loan that is extracting a pound of flesh from a marginal borrower feeds Wall Street's profit machine.
People talk about starving the machine. You want to truly starve the machine? Get out of debt and stay out of debt, regardless of the sacrifices needed to do so. I personally know many immigrants to the U.S. who paid off 30-year mortgages in four years or less. How did they do it?
1. Everyone in the family 16 or older worked.
2. Everyone's earnings went to pay off the mortgage.
3. No money was squandered on cable, dish TV, eating out, new clothing, costly vacations, etc. Zip. zero, nada.
There was a saying in the 1960s--you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem. Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it.
Yes, I have debt, too, but we are doing everything in our power to pay it off as soon as possible. That's all anyone can do. But it's important to do so, starting now.
»
- 38352 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
You can do even better than un-debt.
Every dollar you hold outside of a bank sucks 20 more out of the economy due to the fractional reserve multiplier -- it works both ways. There's a reason bank runs kill banks.
Indeed. Hence the stacks of 20s in waterproof packaging; enough for a few month's expenses; currently alongside the shiny stuff resting alongside my holed canoe in the bottom of the lake I can't quite remember how to find. Unfortunate, it was. Damned regrettable. I do find that carrying negative debt around with me almost counterweights the ice-cream Dunlop around my waist.
Holding federal reserve notes outside of the banking system is irrelevant to bank solvency or credit availability. You have totally misunderstood the implications of fractional reserves and fiat currency. Your theory would only make sense if you were under a gold standard or there were some other limit to the number of reserve notes.
Any individual bank has to keep its reserve ratio in line. You make a deposit and that increases reserves they can lend against. Does it affect solvency? No. It sure as hell does affect what they can lend against.
Also note that the banks game the reserves, almost every bank has done demand deposit account "upgrades" for "free" to a moneymarket (NOW) accounts years ago. Why? With NOW accounts they can do nightly sweeps that move the money out of the account, reducing the reserve requirement to zero. They wouldn't be doing that if the reserve requirement wasn't limiting them.
Banks will use every dollar on their books to help them in every way possible, there's no need to give them ammo. Will they get backstopped, will they get low-cost money from the Fed? Sure, but they'll make less if we're not helping them with free loans.
I understand everything you said. You even seem to acknowledge the effect of central bank action in your last paragraph. If you know the central bank is managing the availability of reserves in the economy and the banking system, why would you think that any consumer behavior (short of totally checking out of the system) could not be managed?
MMT bull crap.
This has zero to do with central banks managing reserves. It's about individual banks managing reserves to maximize their own profit.
If you don't think consumer behavior doesn't affect banks, just look back to when BofA was fucking up more than usual and the Occupy movement was at its prime, and people were moving to credit unions. A fraction of a percent of their customers closed accounts and they freaked right the fuck out. Why? Because the bonuses bank management gets aren't coming from the Fed, that's why, they're coming from profits made off the back of consumer deposits and consumer credit.
The only way the Fed could "manage" consumers bailing out of banks would be to raise interest rates to bring them back, and that will kill both banks and government spending, so it will never happen.
Everything my Grandfather told me, which he had learned running a hardware store in Appalachia through the Great Depression, has always been true. All the "Dear Abby" columns have always been correct, also. It's just not very sexy to hear that there aren't any shortcuts, you don't really own it if you're still paying it off, you have to weigh risk and reward on your own terms and not on the terms described to you by the salesman, etc.
The problem people run into is that they want to believe the siren song. A bunch of people I know lost their jobs at Target Corporation last week. Many of them were making around $150k household income, and now they're wondering how to make the $9000 monthly nut on houses with bedrooms they've never set foot in and bathrooms in which they've never taken the ol' dumperoo.
I feel badly for their pain, but Jesus Horatio, people. When have you ever placed responsibility for your own well-being on somebody else's purported good intentions, and had it work out well in the long term? Sometimes I thiink growing up very poor was an absolute godsend. I had to learn very early on that the help people offered was usually in exact proportion to what they expected out of it later, and made it a virtue rather than a cause for grievance.
Sort of like Mind Control.
People admonish you for not buying a house. They refer to their abode as "my house" even though they just hold a mortgage.
And Employeers want you to buy a new car & house to keep you hungry and dedicated to the job and the boss.
I think #3 and #4 might be difficult jumps for many.
"3. People who recognize debt as the status quo's favored instrument of oppression, control and exploitation."
I guess if you look at a car contract you can see that you pay double the price of the car over 4 years. And Leasing the Car provides no ownership, so you end up giving the car back or buying the car when you could have been making payments if you found a good deal. It is also a Scam to add perks to the car making the car more expensive each year.
Mind control. Advertising. Debt Slavery.
I remember 25 years ago you could buy a brand new car for $7000 - $8000 or even less if you worked for a car company.
Inflation is part of the Debt Slavery-Mind Control.
Housing, Health Care, Education, Cars, Day Care, eating out.
Even more than cars and houses, employers love married people with children. There are no more powerful chains than children. They don't want single childless employees, because they are less likely to put up with company BS.
Next time start your Italics after the first quotation mark, and you'd see the greenie I gave you for that true observation.
knowing my own recklessnes and realizing that the spend now pay later mentality is the root of the problems we face as an economic civilisation Ive never borrowed from what you'd call "financial institutions"... newer owned a credit card... bought cars for cash only...
biggest debt I ever acumulated was 3,500 EUR.. borrowed from my employer for a buissnes trip- paid it back with the money I made on the buissnes trip. thats all... feels good to be debt free- on the one hand. But then You meet people your age- with real fancy cars, "their own" homes, livin the life... and in a society where everyone is judged on how much cash they can show off (not to be mistaken with how much cash is acctualy theirs and not their obligation to some slavemaster) it is sometimes verry hard to get laid if your ride home is a 1992 Skoda... The fact that youve never had to overdraw an account before pay day doesnt move you up in social perception/standing, as much as prommising someone youll keep your shit job that You hate to pay off a car, that by the time youve fullfilled your obligation to a lender, will be a piece of junk (even if its shiny, new and everyone is jelous now)... So not adding to the problem results in a pretty bleak existance sometimes :P and society does not encourage it...
couple of things
1. peer pressure has meaning only if you think it has. do you really care what a bunch of debt serfs and kim kardouche-ian lovers think or do?
2. never mistake real wealth for the accouterments of wealth.
as for bleakness, well, that is a state of mind. where do you spend your time and energy.
or if you are chasing the P*ssy, then do you really want to be in relationship with a woman who only cares about how big a house you can buy her. and who does not really care what you sacrificed to buy that house.
Where do I spend my time and energy? ...I paraglide, and play in a punk rock band. Travel for work (but thats the only reason Im still working in the same place- to get to see places, Asia especially)...
I don't have the problem with the modest lifestyle, in fact I will probably be quitting my corporate job to just focus on paragliding and putting the rat race on the back burner, and so my life will again be much more modest than it is (when I was still in college and had to do the crazy hustles I did for survival- I was broke alot of the time but happier than I am now with an ok income job as an engineer)... Its just the effort You put into the system isnt worth the benefits anymore... You live within Your means not verry high off the level of an average bum- so people turn to the sticky line of credit for help, and before they know it their life becomes a cycle of paying debt.
But not to go in circles- I dont have a problem with those downsides of a modest life: I do cool shit that doesnt reqire alot of money- that keeps me happy... and peer pressure stopped being a problem for me at the age of 8... but I see why so many people in my generation (im under 30) go for swiping the plastic around and putting their "john hankocks" down on 30 year obligations (the ones denominated in swiss franks were verry popular in Poland- now many guys I went to school with stay up at night with big green multi-year CHF charts flashing in front of their eyes... Im usually driving back from a gig in my shit car at that time- laughing every mile of the way...)...
also on the pussy topic- im not verry distressed by it (my lifestyle fits being single) but You must understand- the value a majority of women ascribe to the moneyspending a man does in this culture is saddening- not to use any harsher terms. That is the only reason I mentioned that angle... and sure You have to look for a special person that appreciates the right things in life- but dare I say we are turning out less and less of people like that as a culture in general theese days? Looking is getting verry hard...
JUST DEFAULT and quit buying crap you don't need you PANSIES.
Like most grad students you get caught in that trap of Student Loan Debt,credit card debt and low starting salary
So I got a second job: I sold weed for about a decade. Paid off cards first, then Student Loans. Built up a cushion of about 20k. Put in my hometown bank and quit slinging the Seven Leaf
Now my only debt is mortgage. I use credit card points for free schwag and pay off every month. I finance nothing. Jamie "Cufflinks" Dimon would call me a "deadbeat"
I figure my small town bank will be the last to do bailin.
I will not pay those vampire banksters one thin dime
" Those who refuse debt, regardless of the sacrifice, are starving the parasitic, exploitive machine; those with debt are feeding it"
That is the rule I live by! If you have no interest liabilites on outstanding debts, your income is untouched by the parasite class of bankers. Debt is slavery.
Russians do not spend money they do not have normally.
I agree with the author but without real money savings is sort of a mirage. The banksters can change the currency, debase it wildly, or eliminate it all together.
Gold and silver money, very difficult. Even in an economic collapse it will take months, probably years to get people to use real money. Govt may make it 'illegal'. May confiscate it.
Reading history tells me there is not anything a government won't do, including murder, genocide, fraud and wars to maintain its supremacy. In it's last dying gasp it will kill thousands/millions without nary a thought.
well. selling the caddy will take care of this year, and maybe next year.
but, what is he gonna sell to pay for obammy care in year 3.
there is a limit here to how much debt can be carried, both as individual and as a nation. we have passed those limits and thus we can only await the inevitable.
more hookers and drugs, please.
The vampire isn't starving. It taxes everything. Food, water, shelter, utilities, transportation, communication, construction, education, drugs, entertainment. You can't take a shit without paying tax. Tax, license, registration, permits, violations against the State at the arbitrary whim of any jackbooted thug or petty bureaucrat. Carbon tax? What are you going to do, stop breathing?
America and Europe are being colonized by the minions of the Old World vampires. The phrases "Redneck" and "Redleg" refer to the white slaves of the period before the white rose against the *crats. The past is coming up hard and fast. Socialism is the soft language euphemism for slavery.
You already violate at least 3 unconstitutional decrees a day, every day. Get some. Either way they are going to kill us.
5. So what of it you think. I was raised to be conservative in these matters and one should simply not get into debt, so you won’t pay interest.
Wrong. Not only because if nobody went into debt, there would be no money, but because companies go into debt to finance their production. They pay interest (capital costs) over these loans. And like any cost this must be calculated into the prices they ask for their goods and services.
And what percentage of prices can be related to interest? It depends on the kind of business, particularly how capital intensive it is. Going from 12% for garbage collection to 77% for renting a house. All in all about 40% of prices can be traced back to costs for capital. These figures are by Kennedy and they have been corroborated by an independent study done by Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands under the supervision of STRO, a leading monetary think tank in the Netherlands.
So, you lose 40% (!!!!) of your disposable income to interest through prices.
Credit to Anthony Migchels
Undebtors will be ruled as anti-social and will require reeducation. Refusal to voluntarilly enroll in the reeducation will result in forfeiture of all assets and autonomy.
This is the future. Learn to love it.
great ideas...can you spot me a fiver 'til payday?
What a fun article to read right after Sallie Mae oops!Navient emailed me today to congratulate me on paying off my 120k in student loans.
Wow, that is an accomplishment. You have lifted the yoke of debt slavery from around your neck and thrown it away.
Now spread the word that long-term debt should not be considered unless all other means of acquiring the necessary funds for your personal happiness have been explored.
Tonight I will pour a glass of champagne and make a toast in your honor, congratulations.
For years the banksters have referred to people who pay off their credit cards every month as deadbeats. Not very flattering.
I wonder what they call people like me who have no debt at all? I would prefer something like wooden stake, silver bullet, or model citizen. But, they probably use something even less flattering, like traitor.
I used to use have an HSBC card. When they noticed I was paying down to zero each month they cut my due date from 28 days to 21 days
I cancelled the card immediately. Severbal months later they courtesy called me to come back. I thoroughly enjoyed telling Jenny from Bangalore she could go fuck herself with an HSBC card
From Juggalo:
“What does "accessing your own credit" mean? You don't borrow credit you borrow assets. You can't borrow your own assets because they are already yours, and the bank certainly CAN lend you their assets. That is all the bank can lend. Fiat currency is irrelevant to this discussion.
Answer: when you go to the bank and take out a loan, you are being hypothecated. This action creates a debt instrument and its credit simultaneously. You then are asked to dotted line a physical asset to bank in the event of default. This money you created during hypothecation is private bank credit based on your signature. The bank does not loan its own money, or its assets. If bank needs reserves it simply borrows them from the FED at the discount window @ .25%. Banker does not loan you any money out of somebody’s account. Has your savings ever been depleted to give somebody else a loan? No of course not.
In effect, you borrow your own credit when you take out a loan, and you spend this personal credit into the money supply. Banker was given hypothecation privilege by maneuvering government. Once your credit is spent into money supply, it becomes public domain. This action is a mismatch of types, privately created credit used by others as pubic commons.
Fiat currency is most certianly relevant, in that private banker credit is “private fiat” based on debt instrument creation. Credit as money peels off of its debt instrument in direct proportion to loan’s principle. In future, to discharge debts, principle plus interest must be paid back. Obviously this is impossibility. Also, futurity requires you to work to make prices to attract somebody else’s bank credit, and that credit is under severe drain pressure as loan payback.
Somebody also quoted Margrit Kennedy earlier about usury being buried in prices. That is also correct. If a producer takes out a business loan, the cost of the loan is buried in prices. This is also noted in Gap theory from Social Creditors (see Major Clifford Hugh Douglas writings).
Both usury and money type matter in an economy. Floating money (debt free) that has no counterpart in a debt instrument is highly efficient and does not drain away to disappear into ledger, and hence FM will consummate many transactions on its trajectory. FM may also be stored as savings, and hence savers can loan to new debtors, thus bypassing banks.
www.sovereingmoney.eu
Nice try, but not true.
Everyone in America, regardless of their personal level of debt, is carrying their share of an 18 T debt load plus many multiples in unfunded liabilities which they, through their elected representatives, have signed a note for.
A USD is an IOU from the Federal Reserve (Debt).
The system is completely corurpted. Hard to avoid Credit and Debt Instruments. MMT Economic Theory seems to say Money = debt = Credit.
The Federal Government can not operate without Credit. And Credit is Debt.
Federal Reserve is run perhaps by two accounts Debit and Credit, Assets and Liabilities.
Usually in Business your accounting equal out Liabilities with Assets. I'm not an Accountant BTW. But seems the Financial worth is usually equal to either your liabilities or your Assets since they are so closely aligned on the Books. But then there are off Balance Sheet assets and liabilities so I can't really explain this.
But a Federal Reserve Note, USD, US Treasury Bill/Bond are all Debts.
Your Savings in any Bank are also IOUs. Your Bank Savings are Bank Debts Owed to You.
I probably need someone to correct me on some of this.
The BIS / IMF / Fed Reserve / HSBC / LIBOR et al is a bank. Their objective isn't to control the conflict, it's to control the debt that the conflict produces. The real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. This is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.
"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? ... That's what it means to be a slave"
you can't live in the us, and be a un-debtor, your politicians have made it impossible.
if 2008 didn't teach you that, well good luck.
when I'm made responsible for someone loaning money, to someone knowing it will never be repaid, and the borrower having no intention of ever paying the loan back, and then these two immoral parties get a bail-out, and I'm re-paying the loan, (through higher taxes), there can be no un-debtors.
what pisses me off the worst is my great, great, great grandchildren will be born, (maybe), into a country of indentured servitude.
The ones who bleed the system are the ones who find ways to avoid paying.
http://www.amazon.com/Debt-Hope-dirty-survival-strategies/dp/1907498524
@ Laws of Physics (Post 5898679): Familiarize your readership with the definition:
Sarchasm: that gulf between the writer and the reader who doesn't get it.
From Jugalo:
I think the idea is less government and public goods and more reliance on private transactions. They're either assuming the economy wouldn't collapse or that economic collapse of the current system is inevitable / a good thing.
These Jugalo comments are more error. Balance is what is required, where each sector is constrained to its place by law.
Neoliberal finance objective is to put populations into debt. This is private banking corporations that own the ability to create credit through loans. At some point, the future arrives, and debts cannot be paid. Then harvest phase.
During harvest phase, real assets are transferred to cancel the debts. These harvest phases are usually accompanied by attempts to grab formerly paid for commons.
The idea is to put tolls on the commons so an oligarchy can take rents forever, thus displacing sovereign people from their lands.
In other words, reliance on unregulated private action leads toward monopoly forces attempting to take over the commons.
A good example is Britain privatizing their post office, then underselling the land/buildings cheap to insider cronies. These cronies then get the land and buildings and other assets for cheap, to then take rents. Another example is rail road barons in the U.S. who got land for nothing from government, then borrowed credit from private bankers. This land then grew in value as rail improved it and indirect inputs of laboring citizens also improved said lands/assets. In this way, monopoly forces almost undid the United States.
When government creates money and releases it, it floats in money supply to be used by everybody. Initially when it is created it vectors into the commons, making everybody better off. For example, improving infrastructure, such as clean water, would be a commons improvement. This money then goes on to become savings, so private transactions can be consummated.
Monopoly and rent seeking can and does exist in both the private economy and in Government. But, private monopoly forces will always cast aspersions about government’s most sacred responsibility, and that is creating money and injecting it in proper proportion to an economies needs. Only the law can restrain rent seeking, yet another reason why rent-seekers and Oligarchs will demean government. First demean it, so then it can be subverted and taken over, to then enshrine Oligarchy forever.
www.sovereignmoney.eu
Old school economic thinking, where savings and investment were encouraged rather than the debt and consumption that TPTB encourage now, just isn't sexy enough for a western culture that has basically been won over to hedonism.
Under the old model, banks operated like utilities to supply the capital needs of the real economy, not like hedge funds levered up 30-to-one against assets, and fuck the world if it fails. Hell, if you're a bankster who wants to get his dick sucked by a different slut every night, that old school crap is no fun. No fun at all.
Yea..I own two homes, one in Texas and one in Idaho....everything payed off with money I made in the good times.....I have a rental on my Idaho property that pays all taxes and my heating bills....I can live on next to nothing if I had to.
Yes indeed and credit card companies are on it, as they sell your transactions to anyone who has a buck to buy them, especially those behaviorial analytics that like to score you to the left and then to the right. Argus is just one of these companies but we come back to the secret scoring of America and credit cards are in the game big time.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/08/argus-analytics-produces-share-of.html
If that isn't bad enough, are you ready to start letting newspaper media sites charge you 20 cents to read some articles. You know it's been funny on Tiwtter as I have tweeted this to people who write for them....dead silence:) NYT, WSJ and Washington Post to name a few are in they said so how long before this appears? Credit card companies win again with truckloads of more of your transactions to sell. Of course the papers probably get a very small cut of this action as that's it goes today in major media. The producers of news are not being rewarded that large, but rather the ones who distribute what we all take time to write and profit in huge way, you know the old Facebook model, that's what it is.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/03/major-us-newspapers-sign-up-and-invest.html
As a secondary focus, the link above is where I also cover the take over of the journobots and how they too can now work with stock exchange bots and rig trading with setting parameters to release certain types of news about a company based on the exchange trading bots and what they are doing. Yup it's one more algorithm programmed to go search out another and make money.
What is DEBT?
Hold on there! Debt is not all BAD. Only bad debt is bad, that is, going into debt to consume more than you earn. It is an essential factor of production that credit is provided for the expansion and growth of goods and services: this we call ‘investment’. It is only the banksters who have distorted the virtuous paradigm to an infinite grotesqueness by their greed and avarice.
The “Parable of the Talents”, in Matthew 25:14–30 tells of a master who was leaving his house to travel, and, before leaving, entrusted his property to his servants. According to the abilities of each man, one servant received five talents, the second servant received two talents, and the third servant received one talent. The property entrusted to the three manservants was worth 8 talents, where a talent was a significant amount of money.
Upon returning home, after a long absence, the master asks his three servants for an accounting of the talents he entrusted to them. The first and the second servants explain that they each put their talents to work, and have doubled the value of the property with which they were entrusted; each servant was rewarded: The third servant, however, had merely hidden his talent, had buried it in the ground, and was punished by his master:
He also who had received the one talent came and said, "Lord, I knew you that you are a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter. I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth. Behold, you have what is yours."
But his master answered him, "You wicked and slothful servant. You knew that I reap where I didn't sow, and gather where I didn't scatter. You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent from him, and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn't have, even that which he has will be taken away. Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
I think this illustrates the point of the article.
I'm sorry but how does 'this' illustrate the point of the article? Also - can you square your biblical citation with the fact that the only time in the bible that Jesus lost his temper was with the money changers/bankers? Plus - since you're getting all biblical - why does the Old Testament (which Jesus adhered to) have the Shemitah or forgiveness of debt every 7 years requirement? Thanks