Economic collapse: Pay off Credit cards or no?

[SummerLite]

I've been faced with this dilemma in the last few weeks as well, how to handle my debt. I'm not getting into any detailed analyses as so many have done here but appreciate whats been shared in all its depth.

My conclusion "right now" and things could change at any time is continue to live the normal/usual life as long as possible while preparing for a collapse. I will continue to whittle away at my debt and keep my agreements, probably only making the lowest payments on credit cards as there's no way I can pay that off in big chunks anyway. I have no idea when a collapse may occur, it could be a year or more away. When it falls apart(and could be at ANY time) I will no longer care about the debt I owe, more serious things will be going on and hopefully I'll be prepared somewhat. I don't fear or consider anyone is going to come after me for this debt if the SHTF. More then likely it will be gone with no one in pursuit. The debt collectors will have other things to do as well. That's one scenario and the one I'm going with at the moment. If I follow another course of action right now, such as not paying the debt, using the $ for survival etc. then I could place myself in a knarly situation and suffer the consequences for awhile at least.

If "they" come after me after a crash for not paying on my debt, after honoring it as long as possible (and A LOT are going to be in that boat), then at least I have the weight on my side of honoring my debts and paying them on time all these years, I was in good standing and that does seem to be helpful (right now anyway while life is "normal").

My financial situation is fairly simple however. I don't have a mortgage, no property to come after, no stocks.

One needs money for certain "preparations" and if that money needs to come from what would be paid on the credit card pay off, I'd go for getting the supplies first. If you have what you need and can still pay off or pay down the debt...Great! It does eliminate some burden and adds to freedom and peace of mind. Also this will be better if a "reshuffling" of the economy occurs, leaving one with less burden of debt when making money may be harder to come buy (most likely

So that's my plan at the moment, fairly simple I guess.

 

[sitting]

So that's my plan at the moment, fairly simple I guess.

I believe it's a very sensible plan.

I also admire the Liteness of its formulation. It's a quality I try to strive for in everyday life. It comes to you naturally it seems, which is a wonderful gift indeed!

 

[Woodsman]

Neil, Woodsman, sitting, SeekinTruth, all very good points. This sums up the arguments nicely against the fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking.

Well, any agreement that is made through fraud/manipulation is not a valid agreement, as in the case of fractional reserve banking and only creating the principle at the time of loan and expecting the principle plus interest to be paid to close out the loan (there's never enough money in the money supply to pay off the debts accrued by society, perpetuating debt indefinitely). I don't think a moral case can be made in many situations to pay back the loans to the fraudsters - BUT it's a legal / law enforcement issue that can be a threat in the future, not a moral/ethical one that one needs to consider.

And it's interesting that we are supposedly here in this 3D STS realm due to our naivete, in that 4D STS beings seduced us into believing it would be fun. I see similar parallels in the fraudulent contracts to which we bind ourselves through banking and other institutions. In the case of 4D STS trickery that got us here, it couldn't have happened unless we agreed, but that doesn't mean we don't have an escape clause. We do - The Work. I guess I'm a little uncomfortable with simply ignoring debts as that seems too simple. If the repayment of karmic debt is challenging, to say the least, then I propose that the analogous repayment of financial debt comes with it's own challenges, as well.

Now, that's not to say that defaulting on debts is verboten as far as repaying with money goes. After all...

But to sum it up simply:

You cannot give back that which doesn't exist.

But there was an exchange. Something was promised. I think the term that makes a contract binding, or at least one of them is "consideration." And here's is where each person has to look deep into their own psyche to find what is the nature of that consideration. The do-nothing option is mere abnegation, and probably does more harm than good. Something has to be "paid-back", though not necessarily money, and not to anyone in particular, either. The energy of debt has to be released.

And, it is certainly possible that getting oneself in absolutely the right frame of mind is all that is needed to resolve the issue, but be sure not to leave any doubts in the shadows. Those doubts are debts too.

You seem to understand and yet not understand. I think you might benefit from revisiting the last few posts, because you appear to be stuck in some of the programming surrounding this subject.

Here's my frame of mind:

I do not owe anything to the banks. Everything they take is theft through coercion. There was no honest exchange. There wasn't even an exchange. They did not create, earn, work for, or give me anything. Money is a vacuum. A net negative.

Or rather there IS an exchange; they are bleeding us.

The banks have been free-lunching since the dawn of civilization and I absolutely do not honor my 'agreement' with them, and I am absolutely NOT willing to go to jail for them in lieu of repayment, (as you seem to have suggested in your follow-up post as the correct approach).

You're saying, (or I should say, your programming is saying), essentially, that the slaves owe their masters for the food on their plates and thus should welcome whipping as the just reward should they decide to say, "No."

If we are talking Karma, then I submit that the banking elite are deep, deep in the red for the war and suffering and control inflicted upon our world as a result of their machinations, for all the creative energy they have sucked down their black hole and prevented the expression of.

 

[United Gnosis]

Thank indeed to Neil on post #50, for taking the time to write this summary of the basics. Anyone who has taken the time to pursue a systematic examination of economics (contrasting Keynesian conventional "wisdom" with the alternative Austrian understanding) should reach a pretty similar conclusion.

Let's start by what we can all agree on, as stated by the yogi that ge0m0 mentioned: sincerity. Indeed, we can all agree that integrity is the prime directive of any STO-candidate. As an old saying goes, "Honesty is to the soul as hygiene is to the body".

As I both feel and understand it, there is no way to repay systemic debts with any legitimacy. Let us here define a systemic debt as a debt held by some for-profit financial entity much higher up the food chain, in contrast to a communal debt which could be said to be that debt that is held by economic agents sharing a communal relationship and a similar level of the economic ladder. Clearly, in reality there is a continuum of wealth gap and economic empowerment but let us consider this basic polarity for a moment -

While the communal lending dynamic is rather STO - tending towards more organic, win-win agreements based on mutual goodwill - systemic lending is the fundamental dynamic of the STS parasitical/predatory feeding hierarchy. It subtly yet fully depends on the economic & political world order forcefully imposed over the populace.

The major financial actors are allowed to print/multiply money with fractional reserves, to falsify financial statements by marking assets to fantasy valuations or even to classify held debt as assets, when not resorting to outright fraud. This allows them to fly over the melee, so to speak.

But the populace swims in an economical environment where artificial scarcity is enforced. Consider an imaginary home loan of 200k, at 3% over 25 years. 200,000$ come into play by virtue of signing the deal (with the bank only needing to set aside a few thousand as fractional reserve) while 86,000$ in interest is expected to be repaid on top of the initial amount of the loan. But this is not an exception: every single dollar that comes into play comes with such interest that is never designed to be repaid. So even with billions floating in an economy, billions more of unrepayable interest also float around.

So what happens? An environment of competition where game theory dictates depredation as the simplest winning strategy (for the short-sighted). Fighting, cheating happens; everyone needs to pull the sheet on their side of the bed, to secure extra funds to repay the interest for the repayment of which no money was ever created. Scarcity of money increases as principal money is used to repay the interest, while the major actors extract a constant stream of interest-free principal, laundered energy.

In such a situation, to repay a systemic debt cannot be ethical. It implies depriving other economic agents on your level of the means with which to repay their own debts, most probably through means that are predatory or parasitic on one level or another (selling something for more than it is worth, convincing people of a need they don't have, etc), while also supporting the system that both feeds on and nurtures exploitation and suffering. It is a means to obtain personal security ("at least they're not coming for MY house") at the expanse of your community.

On the other hand, defaulting on systemic debt is as ethical as it gets. It undermines the role of financial hierarchy as the enforcers, middlemen and parasites of economic activity. By refusing to pay back the amount owed for such a loan, the community gets the profits (assuming the debtor acted in goodwill). The principal was put to efficient use, then rather than extracting currency from the local economy, defaulting insures that it keeps floating around, being put to re-use for optimal efficiency, while the debt is relinquished and consolidated under the money-lenders' name, combating their depredation.

Now, the cynic will observe that the indebted money-lenders will ultimately receive a bail-out à-la Too Big To Fail, shifting the burden back to government and hence the public. Hey, at least we'll have tried ;)

 

[Woodsman]

So what happens? An environment of competition where game theory dictates depredation as the simplest winning strategy (for the short-sighted). Fighting, cheating happens; everyone needs to pull the sheet on their side of the bed, to secure extra funds to repay the interest for the repayment of which no money was ever created. Scarcity of money increases as principal money is used to repay the interest, while the major actors extract a constant stream of interest-free principal, laundered energy.

In such a situation, to repay a systemic debt cannot be ethical. It implies depriving other economic agents on your level of the means with which to repay their own debts, most probably through means that are predatory or parasitic on one level or another (selling something for more than it is worth, convincing people of a need they don't have, etc), while also supporting the system that both feeds on and nurtures exploitation and suffering. It is a means to obtain personal security ("at least they're not coming for MY house") at the expanse of your community.

On the other hand, defaulting on systemic debt is as ethical as it gets. It undermines the role of financial hierarchy as the enforcers, middlemen and parasites of economic activity. By refusing to pay back the amount owed for such a loan, the community gets the profits (assuming the debtor acted in goodwill). The principal was put to efficient use, then rather than extracting currency from the local economy, defaulting insures that it keeps floating around, being put to re-use for optimal efficiency, while the debt is relinquished and consolidated under the money-lenders' name, combating their depredation.

Well put. That last paragraph in particular represents an "Ah-hah!" I'd not fully coalesced previously from following the logic on this. Indeed, I find almost all of the excess energy I manage to gather gets spent on my community and on projects which can help the world as I understand it.

The thing which sits as a frustration is knowing just how much more could be done if I wasn't pouring so much needless energy down the bank drain.

It makes me want to take a hard look at my plans to continue to take the safe route, (working to pay the banks).

 

[kalibex]

It makes me want to take a hard look at my plans to continue to take the safe route, (working to pay the banks).

Odd; possible 'Play Nice and stay trapped in the system' program though it may be, I'm swinging to the opposite pole now. Paying my consumer debt off wasn't in question, as much as the timing - I had been dithering regarding whether to first gather a few more durables that would be useful in a 'return to the land/foraging' scenario, before returning to increasing the payment amount (as long as the local situation permitted).

Only now, I have a sudden, fierce desire to pay it off as fast as possible. Perhaps the impulsive nature of this is suspect. But I haven't really resented my debt as much as I've resented myself for accruing it. No one else 'made' me buy that stuff. As I see it now, (at long last?) it doesn't matter even if this place is deliberately 'designed' to foster stress, misery, chronic unhappiness, and to promote massive amounts of habitual, self-soothing addictions.

Meaning, that specific debt, in my own context, is not debt that makes me feel 'victimized' (and believe me; I've got experience feeling victimized ). I didn't need to use plastic to carry me due to a sudden lack of income or a catastrophic bad luck event- it was used (mostly) for self-soothing 'extras'.

The school loan debt I don't worry as much about, as I feel repayment there is logically contingent upon working in that field, so if that job (and/or all jobs) evaporates, I will put that particular repayment on 'hold', if there's any balance left, without undue angst.

That was what I meant by wondering earlier whether each debt's 'meaning' (and thus, its 'solution') might well vary by context.

 

[Neil]

If we're going to speak of karma and lessons, I think an appropriate analog to the banking system is rape. What lessons does a rape victim learn? Perhaps they learn to be very perceptive of the people hang around with, improve their psychic hygiene, avoid dangerous places at night, and always expect attack. While these lessons may be learned from the experience, this is really the worst possible way to learn and in any world actually run by reasonable human beings, this kind of behavior would not be allowed to go on. The lesson would be introduced in a gentler way that is less likely to lead to total disintegration. The victim does not owe the perpetrator for the experience, even if she made some bad decisions that made her an easy target. The soul may wish to learn these lessons, but I highly doubt anyone chooses the rape experience, it sounds more like STS eating whatever it is able to and generally making a mess of things rather than any sort of karmic agreement between the participants in the rape. The financial system is the same way. It teaches the lessons of STS, free lunch, elitism, perspicacity in decision making and so forth, but only at the expense of destroying most of the people it touches. The financial system rapes creativity and human dignity from 90+% of the world so that the people at the tippy top of the pyramid can pretend to be gods. If you think about all of the billions living on less than $2 a day, most of us here having this discussion are closer to the upper classes of the pyramid than the lower classes. Those at the bottom are so far down they basically don't even have a voice left to cry out. Are they learning lessons? Maybe, but again in the worst possible way and this behavior would never be allowed to go on in a world run by sane people.

All of this brings me to an interesting thought about the people who run up their debts prior to the collapse in the hopes that the debt will be erased. That also sort of seems like free lunching in a way and may not be a good thing. Of course, on the other hand, the bankers are so deep in the red, as you say Woodsman, perhaps turning the tables, refusing to acknowledge their counterfeit money, and stealing a little of their own money back is sort of a balancing mechanism, giving them back what they've been giving us. I won't claim to know whether such a thing is ethically valid, but I figure that this whole discussion about debt and what to do with it is a situation where the Neutralizing Force factors rather heavily.

Bringing this thread back down to the practical level which inspired it, we can't just all walk out right now and not pay our debts even though we know they are fraudulent and basically screwing us. There will be repercussions and we still don't really know what's going to happen and how far it will go after the collapse. They will come after you and there's no need to make your life unduly difficult if you can basically afford the payments. Therefore, what I'm doing is the middle of the road scenario described by several others, that is, keep the bill collectors happy for now, and make contingencies to placate them in case they come after me, and funnel all other disposable income into needful things. I'm not really expecting my gold strategy to get me completely out of debt unless I get ridiculously lucky, but I may need it to get them off my back long enough to disappear. I may need it for barter and trade, to rent a place, or to pay taxes. When there is "no money," being able to come up with a gesture in those circumstances might be able to allow some flexibility. I do agree that the most effective strategy if the police state goes into overdrive and starts confiscating everything, is to simply disappear. I'm afraid that will be the only real option for most people and it will be a difficult one.

I view it as having a diversified portfolio as financial advisors are so apt to say. We all have taken on various degrees of liabilities and we know that the market is about to become "bearish" so we want to minimize risk going forward. We are like investors for the end of the world. Food, PMs, medical supplies, debt, psychic hygiene, the likelihood is, all of these things will matter to some degree except in the most extreme scenarios. I think it's about finding personal balance while not getting too invested in any one scenario at the expense of the others.

As for my own personal situation, credit card debt is the smallest constituent, about $5K. Student loans, which scare me the most because they are effectively collateralized against your body and soul total about $10K. I also have an auto loan for about $10k. While losing my car would be a major inconvenience, I have other ways to get around and it actually wouldn't be a big deal in a dire situation. So if the loans are "called in" I've got to come up with a little over $15K. That's not too bad, but it's probably enough to get me thrown into the FEMA work camps if that's the angle the PTB are playing at. If I can simply walk away from the debt at that time, I will be laughing all the way to the bank (pun intended) when the bankers can't seem to figure out where I am or when I'm coming home from my "extended vacation."

 

[Weller]

I'm with ge0m0 - that however you want to stack up the coins, there is still an energetic component to our relationship with money (or debt) - and if you dance with the devil, i.e. unethical lenders, this is an energetic relationship you entered into, a fraudulent contract, yes, but one that needs to be resolved with your own ethics intact.

So is it ethically correct to screw the 'banksters' because they themselves are unethical? An eye for an eye? This is about usury - unfairly high interest or fees charged against principal borrowed. What is the karmic penalty for signing a contract with a usurious beast? I think in part it is the ethical bind itself.

Years ago I remember seeing Suze Orman before she went all CNBC (bear with me)...she used to ask, how do you keep your money--in crumpled balls in your pockets, or in neat folds in your wallet? I loved this question because it said so much about the very personal relationship we have with money. Do you have a wary, conscious relationship with "currency" (i.e. flow of energy), or is it chaotic or passive-aggressive? Like it or not, we must participate in a collective system of finance if we choose to buy a home or take out a student loan--do you show it respect, or resent its power over you? By collective agreement, money is the way we maneuver through this STS material world, as the C's said about it, "belong or starve."

Now, fewer and fewer of us carry cash or deposit our paychecks at the teller's window, so we are removed from this tactile interaction with money. But we are as a collective as entangled as ever in the tar baby of financial fraud. This disconnect is probably intentional on the part of TPTB, as it establishes the cognitive dissonance.

My feeling is the most realistic approach is to unplug yourself from the fraud as rapidly and cleanly as possible--but default is not the way to do this, because they will just keep coming after you, keep garnishing your wages or establishing liens or whatever. They have the power of 'law' on their side.

Priority 1 is survival: feather your nest, build the emergency savings that you need to store food, put a roof over your head, secure your safety and health.

Priority 2 is disentangle: eliminate debt, use cash, minimize the TIME (and emotional cost) element of financial obligation; the more debt emotionally burdens you, the more you need to work to get rid of it.

When you pay cash, the transaction is over instantly, no tar baby, no debt hangover. When you buy a home or pay rent with cash (I know, easy to say), there is no MORTgage, no financial albatross until 'death' hanging over you. This is where concepts like the Ithaca Hours currency are so inspiring, because it's removing the middleman shark and simply trading labor equivalents for a product--like paying for the bunch of broccoli at the farm-stand or the carpenter who fixes your roof.

It's all easier said than done, but I think there is something to simplifying transactions whenever possible. The sooner you get the item of your desire with no outstanding obligation, the cleaner the exchange, the fairer the process, and the more you keep your transactions within your immediate 'community'--which itself benefits from your interaction.

As for outstanding debts, my thinking is to refinance with lower rates or pay the minimum for now until the other shoe drops...if hyperinflation comes our way, these debts will be (relatively) easy to pay. I remember talking with a friend from Zimbabwe after their currency collapse, who said everyone paid their mortgages down in no time flat, since debts became very easy to pay off. The bus fare to work cost more than their daily wage, but they all paid down their mortgages. So it became absurd quickly.

And if something other than hyperinflation materializes, we're all in the same ridiculous boat, with unmanageable debts that no one will be able to pay down, so we'll all be in the soup together--to some extent, we are already there, with decades of wage deflation and bank bailouts of 2007/8.

 

[Woodsman]

I'm with ge0m0 - that however you want to stack up the coins, there is still an energetic component to our relationship with money (or debt) - and if you dance with the devil, i.e. unethical lenders, this is an energetic relationship you entered into, a fraudulent contract, yes, but one that needs to be resolved with your own ethics intact.

So is it ethically correct to screw the 'banksters' because they themselves are unethical? An eye for an eye? This is about usury - unfairly high interest or fees charged against principal borrowed. What is the karmic penalty for signing a contract with a usurious beast? I think in part it is the ethical bind itself.

The parallel is this:

If a woman marries a man who is a psychopath and who becomes abusive, do you feel she is obligated to stay in that marriage? Does she owe anything to her abuser?

The "obligation" program is one of the stronger bits of mind control woven into us as we grow up. It is designed to prevent the prey from escaping.

Karma has come up now in a similar way for both you and ge0m0 with regard to the specific relationship between the predatorial lender and the personal debtor. It seems like another control program designed to trap a certain type of person who is becoming spiritually aware. There are programs tailor made for each of us, and this one seems to have found you.

Karma is difficult to speculate over because we can't see the mechanics of how it works. Is it a physical law, or a mutual agreement system among souls? All we really understand, (as far as I am currently aware) in a very general sense is that karma creates a balancing of experiences. If you hurt somebody, karma requires you to experience the other side of that, and be hurt.

Karma arguments are used frequently to prevent Right Action; police officers in India turning a blind eye to abuse because they do not want to interrupt "karma". I consider this faulty thinking. -Karma takes care of karma without any need for our conscious approval on our level. Karma sets up the situations required, and what you want, or think you want, is built into that equation. God and the universe are smarter than you, can see and plan further than you. All karmic debts will be discharged regardless of whether the police officer attempts to intervene based on what he thinks karma has planned. -Except if he chooses to ignore his conscience because of a lie told to him about karma, and this creates suffering, then he will need to experience the other side of that equation. He'll be the one raped while the police officer strolls by. Karma has the whole thing covered.

The best practice as I understand it, is to not try to second guess or assume or dictate Karma's business. Trying to do so is foolishness and vanity; all you or the Indian police officer can do is choose to act or not, and you don't do that based on some mystical, un-knowable premise, but on the Objective Reality here and now and what your conscience tells you is right.

The concept of Karma, as such, is cleverly subverted by the psychopath as an excuse for all manner of inappropriate behavior, for the continuance of abuse and feeding. I think it is a severe distortion to consider that failing to pay back a loan shark somehow creates bad karma for the borrower. Responsibility for the act of trying to control and feed on the prey originates with the predatorial loan shark, the drug pusher and the abuser, not with the victim.

Do you understand the principles of psychopathy and victim blaming? The recommended reading list over in the books section is very helpful in coming to terms with these and many other concepts. It takes a while to absorb so much information, but once you start, a lot of this will become clear: https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,33092.0.html

 

[Mal7]

What does hyper-inflation imply for personal debt holders?

When the giant Ponzi-scheme economic system collapses, it is also possible that it could bring deflation rather than hyper-inflation. The possibility of deflation could affect how people decide to manage their present debt levels. For example, if hyper-inflation was guaranteed, one might think "in the future I'll be able to sell this bunch of bananas for $10,000 and pay off my debt with it", whereas if deflation occurs, raising $10,000 might be even harder than it is at present.

In deflation the prices of things fall. This might sound great, e.g. "I'll be able to buy a whole lot more stuff for the same amount of money", but as the prices of things fall, the availability of money is also declining, so in real terms most people will experience a declining amount of "purchasing power".

The Automatic Earth website discusses deflation, e.g. here:

Deflation would be associated, at least initially, with prices falling across the board, as the collapse of purchasing power would drastically reduce price support for virtually everything. In a deflation, people sell anything they can, in order to pay down debt, to meet margin calls and to cover the cost of living, once access to credit is cut off and earning an income becomes very much more difficult. This is a recipe for prices falling by perhaps 90% in nominal terms, but for goods and services to become simultaneously much less affordable, as purchasing power would be falling even faster. In other words, in real terms, prices rise (i.e. affordability decreases).

- http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.co.nz/2009/07/july-5-2009-unbearable-mightiness-of.html

Another point is that while an economic meltdown seems highly likely in the near future, there are different ways this scenario could play out, not all of which could OSIT be called highly likely. For example, it is possible that some kind of plasma blast could wipe out all electronic records, and banks would lose all their data on personal debts. But I am not sure if this could be said to be highly likely to occur, as opposed to being just a definite possibility, in e.g. the next couple of years.

 

[Woodsman]

I noticed today that news of the new Chinese banking initiative and Canada's lack of response to it so far made the front page of the big local newspaper. I wasn't expecting to see that. If public awareness spikes on that front, it may indicate a manner through which the unraveling of Western currency values could come about.

I wonder if converting some dollars into Rubles or something along those lines while Western currencies still have some buying power might not be a smart move. I wonder if it can be done easily?

Has anybody else thought along these lines?

 

[Sol Logos]

I noticed today that news of the new Chinese banking initiative and Canada's lack of response to it so far made the front page of the big local newspaper. I wasn't expecting to see that. If public awareness spikes on that front, it may indicate a manner through which the unraveling of Western currency values could come about.

I wonder if converting some dollars into Rubles or something along those lines while Western currencies still have some buying power might not be a smart move. I wonder if it can be done easily?

Has anybody else thought along these lines?

Seems like a smart idea, given the next Renaissance potentially has Russia in the centre. As soon as the US dollar and every other currency connected to it goes downhill, or in other words the MSM announces it, I'm sure a lot, I mean a huge a lot or people would have the same conclusion as you I reckon.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Yeah, it's very hard to predict the details and timing of collapse. I'd say it's very likely to happen in the very near future. The thing about (hyper)inflation/deflation is that it will probably be both at the same time destroying the economy. They are already present, but well hidden. Much of the consumer economy (and industrial demand in general) is experiencing deflation (or lack of demand) and the basics (which are kept out of the official statistics by not including food and energy costs in the US inflation figures) have inflation/price increases. Without getting into technical nitty-gritty, this is most likely to get worse and worse, two economically destructive forces pulling it all apart in opposite directions. Right now, the lack of demand reflects in commodity prices falling pretty much across the board, and retail sales falling for consecutive months - all leading to lots of businesses closing.

Basically, things nobody really needs in very desperate situations will not be able to be sold pretty much for any price, no matter how low. Thing EVERYBODY needs to survive will not be sold for any price, no matter how high, if paper currency is what is being offered in trying to pay for it. So, the current system will not work. And the whole destructive force picks up more and more momentum once it is truly unleashed.


About the whole karma thing, I don't buy it either. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, if you actually got credit to pay over time for something you received from a seller, do your best to make good on the deal. All other banking scams that inject themselves into transactions to skim off profits parasitically/in a predatory way, do not give rise to any ethical obligation to pay. I'm just repeating that what needs to be considered is NOT your ethical obligation to fraudulent, predatory and parasitic arrangements, but practical considerations of what might be in store and how to best handle it. Like Mal7 mentioned, there's also the difficulty to know exactly what will happen when and where, including situations where records of debts being wiped out, etc.

 

[sitting]

I wonder if converting some dollars into Rubles or something along those lines while Western currencies still have some buying power might not be a smart move. I wonder if it can be done easily?

Hi Woodsman,

Dollar to Rubles is probably not a good idea. The volatility is simply too great. Even professionals are scared to death of it. The Renminbi however is another story -- backed by now the largest economy in the world. This article gives a good summary:

http://www.bankrate.com/finance/savings/opening-foreign-currency-account.aspx


Now I like to offer a comment on this money & debt subject from a slightly different angle. And it's about you. I hope you will allow me that privilege in the spirit of community.

You seem quite angry about this subject, stemming from your own difficult experience. It's a righteous anger. And in my view justified. Most of us have gotten similarly screwed. But you probably don't want to carry this around too much. And putting some distance to it may not be a bad idea. I hope I'm coming across in the right way.

 

[Leonarda]

Neil's and Woodsman's posts have been very insightful, I remember a sott.talk about the system scam but you two explain it in a direct and simple way, very easy to understand, have you guys thought about putting what you said here into an article and publishing in SOTT? I know there have been other articles about this, but given the state of economics, a reminder would be useful.. Just a thought.