I saw this on the ONE.org blog...
By the "Dear Colleague" letters sign-on deadlines last week, nearly half the Senate and over a fifth of the House had signed.Thanks to all who called their representatives.
You may have noticed recent addition of the ONE banner to my blog. To be honest I ripped it from the Mars Hill site. Then, I found today that you can get it, or one of a few other banners from here.
In case you are wondering, I did watch American Idol tonight.
Peace.
Labels: activism, blogosphere, politics
posted by Shannon Smith @ 1/16/2007
6 Comments
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6 Comments:
yeah, i was on the one.org web site this morning and they still had the link up to sign the petition to keep the 1 billion for releif... I thought that the deadline was a couple of days ago, but i thought that it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and send it anyway.
and, was it just me or was Paula visibly wasted last night? what do they have in those Coke cups anyway?
Here is where I'm troubled by a part of this campaign: debt forgiveness. It's not necessarily that the US, IMF or G8 need the money. They don't, well maybe Russia does. Rather it is the message that is sent to these impoverished countries regarding repayment. There is extensive research in the field and all of it points to the idea that this sneds the wrong message. Yes these countries are underwater in regards to their debt payments, but is forgiving them the right thing to do when past history shows that they will simply take on more debt that will be unpayable?
That's the b-school side of me talking which in this case conflicts (sort of) with what as a Christian I believe. Christ talks about forgiving debt and says in short that we should. I guess the question that I'm trying to reconcile is how do we as believers care for and support these countries and even other people while at the same time move them towards self sufficiency? The models that we have seen in the past (which are essentially the same as this one) have failed. What are the new models that we can try?
I hope that I'm clear that we need to help and are as believers obligated to help. The question is what can we do that will help to build a culture of sufficiency rather than dependency?
wow. good point patrick. the old "teach a man to fish" parable. so how do we teach a country to fish?
we can't just cut them off like a 30 year old that's been living in his parents' basement and mooching off of them. but on the other hand we don't want the rent money to be spent on star trek collectibles and pimple cream.
I found this on the ONE blog, too. It looks like Senators Dole and Burr got the message, but Congressman Etheridge did not.
On Patrick's comment...
Some, not all, of the countries are under-developed, others are war torn. The deacon of Dublin, Bono, made the statement that we are sending them a $250 million bill every month for interest.
The bible speaks on not charging your brother interest. If you do not like the idea of cancelling debt, maybe we could start by just making it like we let a friend borrow twenty bucks, and forget the interest.
Or, companies write off debt as bad debt all the time, maybe we could just write it off as bad debt.
I wonder if countries have credit scores?
Shannon, the question of why there is debt isn't really central to my worry or contention. Regardless of where it came from, what type of behavior does it reward if we continually forgive debt? Think about it from a child's perspective. What happens if a child continually doesn't do their homework. Does a teacher simply forgive them for not doing that previous work? Not at all.
I think cancelling the interest is fine and there instances in the past where the US (horrible capitalistic country that it is) has cancelled interest payments and extended payback period for the sake of the Country they are dealing with.
Companies do write-off bad debt but they are able to take gains from it i.e. they get something out of it. They are called deferred income tax liabilities. Essentially, it's like you making a charitable donation which you can in turn write off on your personal income tax. The company knows it's never going to get paid back so they are able to deduct it from their taxes.
And yes countries do have credit ratings. It's reflected in the interest rates of the government bonds that they issue. For instance US Govm't bonds pay very little interest b/c they are considered a risk free investment whereas Venezuelan Govm't bonds pay an order of magnitude higher b/c their debt is riskier.
I know I sound like a miser, but I worry about what we are signalling or creating if we do this type of thing. The IMF has specific programs in place to help with debt repayment. A great example of an African country that was able to make it out and move towards repaying their debt is South Africa. They followed an IMF plan and now have a well functioning economy and will host the World Cup 2010.
FYI I love this conversation and would love to hear others' thoughts although I'm sure I'll be in the minority.
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