Why not?

Editor,

"But a bailout doesn’t mean wiping out the huge debts that have taken years to accumulate — just as bailing out American banks in 2008 didn’t mean wiping out the huge amount of subprime debt that homeowners had borrowed but couldn’t repay."

Why not? David Graeber in his book "Debt: The First 5,000 Years" documents jubilees and other erasures of debt that have taken place throughout history.

Insisting that 99% of the population pay loans that were irresponsibly extended by the other 1% -- which is already resulting in widespread poverty, homelessness, and debt peonage -- so that the 1% can wallow in opulence is already causing social unrest and will, unless abated, lead to increasing societal disintegration.

These are precisely the reasons why the slate of debt was wiped clean in antiquity and will be ultimately in our own epoch -- unless violent revolution or full-blown fascism arrive first, as occurred in the 20th century.

Re: "Even if Europe Averts Crisis, Growth May Lag for Years" (9/30/2011)