Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (51907)	7/29/2004 11:36:53 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<As for lending money to countries, it all depends on the legitimacy of the government. This is why I say that dictatorships are not truly legitimate governments (which certain people like Zonder obviously disagreed with).. Legitimacy is truly expressed in situations like this one, where the entire international community recognizes that the citizenry of a former dictatorship can not be held responsible for loans which were not taken out in their name..> To take extreme examples, imagine Adolf taking out loans 'for the Third Reich' to fund the construction of concentration camps and extermination programmes. It's a bit rich to expect the survivors of those programmes to repay the loans. Imagine Thomas Jefferson taking out loans to fund the USA which uses those loans to run the government, police and military to defeat the natives and to keep the negroes enslaved. I imagine the natives and slaves when freed would be disinclined to repay the loans. Rightly so. Imagine the South African caucasian rulers taking out big loans, then converting them to diamonds after filtering the money through government programmes for their own benefit, then leaving South Africa with pockets full of diamonds, and the creditors expecting the negroes to repay the loans. I'm not even convinced that in democracies, an incoming government should have to repay loans incurred by previous governments. Since countries are sovereign, they in fact don't have to. Which makes new lenders look sideways at them and raise interest rates if new loans are wanted, which tends to make incoming governments refrain from repudiating loans. The whole realm of government fiat needs a revolution. Citizenships should be tradable commodities. I didn't see Zonder's comments on loans [I haven't read much lately]. People lending money to collectives, including holding the fiat currencies of those collectives, are taking a chance. Mqurice