Saturday, January 17, 2015

Experimenting with Debt Forgiveness in Iceland


Rejkjavik (photo from the Guardian)

As we start to read Graeber's Debt, here's a story from NPR on an interesting proposal for debt forgiveness of mortgage debt of homebuyers - debt that increased after Iceland's own financial crisis of 2008. We will see as we get further in the semester that the notion of debt forgiveness - or the Jubilee (after the biblical notion of universal debt forgiveness) - is crucial to the arch of Graeber's history of debt. Graeber proposes a Jubilee to the current rise in debt across the board. Iceland seems to be experimenting with putting this idea into practice.

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/11/370156273/iceland-experiments-with-a-jubilee-of-debt-forgiveness

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2 comments:

  1. UnknownJanuary 19, 2015 at 12:53 PM

    I actually agree with this idea of Correctment (Jubilee) being used in Iceland. Even though it was stated the one individual felt it was unfair because they chose mortgage debt instead of something else, it still sets up a good environment for the future of economic success with possible structure in moving forward with a second Jubilee proposal as well. However, from my knowledge, education is now free in Iceland as it is apart of the National budget. So their set up for economic success has in fact worked since the 2008 financial crisis.

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 19, 2015 at 4:59 PM

    I think what's been happening in Iceland is fascinating and important...not just the idea of Jubilee, but the ways the economic crisis was handled from the beginning. Conner, you said you agree with the idea for Iceland. Do you have thoughts about it working in America? Here's an interesting link: http://strikedebt.org/rjupdate3/

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