Let’s have a Jubilee

Let’s face it, it isn’t working, is it? All those measures the Serious People have taken since the bankers’ crisis hit in 2007 to get out of recession have failed. Now it’s not just banks, but whole countries that need to be rescued, where being rescued means that everybody suffers but the bankers and while the Greek government might push through their spending cuts, it’s at the cost of risking a new civil war. Meanwhile the housing boom and crash all over Europe has led to a lot of people with huge mortgages who’ll be fscked if they lose their jobs, many banks still have loads and loads of dodgy debts on board, while governments are standing by to pump more money into them, like just happened with Dexia, wif/when these debts turn poisonous. It’s all a big, complicated mess and nobody has a clue what to do.

Since running a post-capitalist, marxist dictatorship of the proletarian is not quite on the cards this year, let’s try something equally radical, from the bible: let’s have a jubilee. In the Jewish tradition, a Jubilee was held once every fifty years, in which all debts were annulled, land returned to the original owner and slaves were freed. We need one now, in which everybody and everything in the EU starts with a clean slate. If you have a mortgage or credit card debt: poof, it’s gone. In return, all these banks owning money to governments will have their debts forgiven while the governments itself should just default. No more debt, no more problem. We get to start over and not have to worry what “the markets” will think.