Life Between 0 and 1

Every day, during my lunch, I read several news sites including MSN. I know, MSN isn’t exactly the best source of news, but I’m an avid music fan and find some of their coverage interesting. The rest of main stream media is a joke now that I’m onto them and their filtered brainwashing of individuals pushing “news” that is subliminally lulling them into a false sense of comfort. There is so much that goes on around the world that just isn’t covered anywhere in American media. When Gary Johnson asked “What is Aleppo?” on Fox News Morning Joe, I was at first surprised but quickly realized that his platform isn’t primarily focused on foreign policy, rather domestic policy. News outlets instead hammered him for not knowing about Aleppo and made correlations to someone not knowing about Sarajevo in the 90’s or Iran-Contra in the 80’s. It’s crap if you ask me. Yes, I’m a third-party supporter, however I’m not biased enough to not recognize a mistake as we all make them. No one is perfect.  He does have a few ideas on his platform that suggest it would improve the economy, but don’t go far enough I think.

The entire monetary system, as it exists right now, is predicated on borrowed money. It was created out of thin air, by the Fed, after the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. A system so broken and propped up by debt can’t sustain itself for too long, and none of the plans by any Presidential candidate really lives up to the promise of being able to fix it. The rich elite run the country and until they don’t, nothing will fundamentally change. Here is a quick and dirty plan I came up with after reflecting a short period of time. I’m not an economist, but do understand the concept of credit/debit systems and religiously balance my register every month.

For all households making less than $250,000/year

• Forgive all property asset debt
• Forgive all consumer credit debt
• Forgive all student loan debt

That might seem like a high annual income amount, however only 3% of American households make over that amount per year. Essentially, you would be removing the two largest amounts of debt for almost 97% of the entire country. An enormous amount of spending power would return to almost 97% of households to where the question or food vs. utilities would not need to be thought of again. The catch, and there’s a catch, is that anyone with a forgiven property asset or consumer credit debt would not be permitted to take on any new debts of those types for a minimum of 12 months. For the majority of the country, I don’t think that would be a problem. This one simple and drastic measure would remove the following amounts of debt from the U.S. financial system:

• $13.8 trillion in mortgages (EOY 2015)
• $929 billion in consumer credit (May 2016)
• $1.2 trillion in student loans (April 2015)

Essentially, when you add it all up, it would remove more in currency than the Fed added to stabilize the economy during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The amounts are staggering especially considering that the group of people in the U.S. that hold that debt are NOT part of the elite class that can afford do a house outright, don’t carry credit in most cases, and typically go to college for free with a “donation” to the University being attended. Forgiving this debt would in turn give the economy a shot of adrenalin to get it jump started in the right direction. How would your view of the country change if you didn’t have to make your monthly mortgage, credit card, and school loan payments. How much would your lives change for the better?

The other side of this problem is with the law and regulatory requirements that would need to be changed. The financial sector could no longer be allowed to self-regulate as they’ve shown over the last several decades they only care about making more money. Any law put in place in the last 30 years would need to be reviewed, analyzed for effectiveness, and then repealed or updated to align with the founding fathers view of law. The law is what grants all citizens the equality that is required to be a true democracy. Laws that favor the elite and/or don’t apply to the elite need to be removed completely. Here’s an example: a guy with a pound of marijuana is sent to jail for 5 years with 5 years probation (legal in some states) while a government official complicit in sharing top-secret emails that threatened national security is mildly scolded. Another example: executive office officials are brought up on charges for destroying top-secret documents, charged, and served jail time while the President that ordered this to take place is pardoned following his resignation by his former Vice-President.

No idea is too crazy once you’ve passed the proverbial point of no return. Yeah, it will be a whole hell of a lot of short-term pain in terms of the financial market, shifting of power, etc. When you weigh it against the long-term potential of doing the above plan and keeping the system working or letting it go and having the system crash globally, seriously, what would the better choice be?