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  • EU Takes Significant Step Toward Using Profits From Frozen Russian Assets For Ukraine

    EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and other European defense and foreign ministers on February 12 joined a torrent of criticism over former U.S. President Donald Trump’s comment downplaying the U.S. commitment to NATO’s security umbrella in Europe.

    “Let’s be serious. NATO cannot be an a la carte military alliance, it cannot be a military alliance that works depending on the humor of the president of the U.S.” day to day, Borrell said after Trump suggested that under his administration the United States might not defend NATO allies that failed to spend enough on defense.

    Borrell added that he would not keep commenting on “any silly idea” emerging from the U.S. presidential election campaign.

    Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2024 race, sent a chill through European allies when he said at a campaign rally on February 10 he would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO country that does not meet financial obligations.

    U.S. President Joe Biden called Trump’s comments “appalling and dangerous” in a statement on February 11, joining several European defense and foreign ministers responding over the weekend.

    Live Briefing: Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine

    RFE/RL’s Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kyiv’s counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL’s coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

    The reactions continued on February 12, with Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren saying Trump’s comment was “exactly what Putin loves to hear.”

    Ollongren called the comment “worrying” and said it was not the first time that Trump has made a comment along these lines.

    While in office, Trump — who was defeated by Biden in the 2020 election — often expressed doubts about the need for NATO and repeatedly threatened to pull out of the alliance if members did not pay what he considered their fair share for their defense.

    Ollongren rebuffed Trump, stressing that NATO’s strength is in its unity.

    “If we’re not united, it makes us weaker. And we know that that is what Putin is looking for,” he told Reuters on February 12.

    The principle of collective defense — the idea that an attack on one member is considered an attack on all and would trigger collective self-defense action — is enshrined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty. It is considered the hallmark of the NATO alliance.

    Ollongren also noted that most NATO allies were close to or had reached the target budget spending on defense of 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2024. NATO allies agreed to the goal in 2014.

    German Finance Minister Christian Lindner also reacted to Trump’s comment. Speaking in London on February 12, Lindner said the transatlantic partnership will continue.

    “Regardless of who is in the White House, we have an overriding interest in continuing to cooperate across the Atlantic, economically, politically, and also in matters of security,” he said.

    Lindner said Britain and Germany shared similar challenges when it came to strengthening free-trade capabilities.

    The dialogue “is of particular importance” after Trump’s statements, Lindner said before going into a meeting with British counterpart Jeremy Hunt.

    “We are facing major challenges as European members of NATO,” Lindner said, adding that Europe’s peace and free-trade order had been put at risk by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

    German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier echoed other EU leaders, saying the statements “are irresponsible and even play into Russia’s hands.”

    Meanwhile, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on February 12 discussed ramping up security cooperation in Europe with the leaders of Germany and France as fears grow that Trump’s possible return to the White House might threaten Western solidarity against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Tusk said the philosophy at the heart of relations between the European Union and NATO was based on “one for all, all for one.”

    Speaking in Paris, he said Poland was “ready to fight for this security.” Later in Berlin, Tusk hailed a “clear declaration that we are ready to cooperate” on Europe’s defense.

    With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP


    This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australia cuts off channel for China’s rich to shift assets offshore

    Australia has revoked its “golden visa” immigration program targeted at attracting wealthy investors, a move that marks one fewer option for China’s rich to escape with their assets from an increasingly difficult political and economic climate at home.

    Australian media reported this week that the Labor government announced in December plans to scrap the program at the end of last year because it could not bring economic benefits to the country. Also, members of the Australian Values ​​Alliance – a group founded by Australians of Chinese heritage – pointed out that wealthy Chinese people have infiltrated politics.

    The program will be replaced by a new immigration plan to provide more visas for skilled immigrants.

    “It has been obvious for years that this visa is not delivering what our country and economy needs,” said Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil in a statement Monday.

    “The investor visa is one of many aspects of the system which are reforming to create a system which delivers for our country,” she added.

    The Business Innovation and Investment Program (BIIP), commonly known as the “golden visa”, was launched in 2012. Unlike other visa programs, it did not require foreign immigrants to learn or master English, nor did it have age restrictions. It was only mandatory for foreign citizens to invest up to A$5 million (US$3.3 million) to obtain residence for five years.

    Research by the Australian government has, however, shown that the average economic value contributed by the immigrants in this program to Australia in their lifetime is $600,000, which is just slightly more than a third of the $1.6 million generated by Australian citizens.

    According to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, more than 100,000 overseas immigrants have used the program to obtain residency in the country since 2012, with 85% of successful applicants coming from China. Currently, about 26,000 people have successfully obtained permanent residence in Australia.

    The visa subclass was even given the number “888”, as eight stands for prosperity and is auspicious in Chinese numerology. 

    China’s rich – tools of CCP infiltration

    Over the years, critics have argued that the plan created not just a fast path for China’s wealthy to immigrate but had served as a conduit for corrupt officials in authoritarian countries to “move illicit funds.”

    Australian commentator Huangfu Jing told Radio Free Asia Cantonese that Chinese tycoon Huang Xiangmo, who was permanently banned from entering Australia for political donations in 2019, was a “golden visa” immigrant. The biggest problem with these wealthy Chinese immigrants, therefore, is not their inability to create greater economic value, but that they have become tools for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) infiltration, she said.

    “Australia eventually discovered it didn’t earn much [from the program], but lost more, giving the CCP considerable penetration opportunities. A substantial number of these investment immigrants were pushed out and packaged by the CCP for all-round infiltration. Huang Xiangmo’s political donation is a typical example.”

    Huangfu Jing believes that the CCP, faced with economic difficulties, has nationalized assets of China’s rich through what it labeled as “public-private partnership” schemes. As a result, she said wealthy Chinese, stripped of their wealth, will certainly flee China but at the same time, Western countries are increasingly aware of the risks and shutting their doors early.

    Former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin claimed that wealthy Chinese immigrants who landed in Australia also brought in a legion of unproductive people with no economic contribution to the country. He said they cause social havoc with bad Chinese cultural behavior and habits, including bribery and corruption that influences politics.

    Still, Chen believes that the door should remain open for these affluent affluent businessmen.

    “Moving their money out will hollow out China’s economy and prompt social change; there’s no downside, in fact only benefits,” Chen said.

    Apart from Australia’s “golden visa”, the “golden passport and visa” of some European Union countries are also popular among China’s rich. Countries like Malta, Cyprus and Bulgaria have issued “golden passports” to foreign investors, while Greece and Portugal granted “golden visas,” at investment prices ranging €1 million (US$1 million) to €5 million. 

    As early as January 2019, the European Commission warned countries offering “golden visas” to foreign investors that their schemes may help organized crime groups infiltrate the EU and increase money laundering, corruption and tax evasion and other risks.

    In February 2023, Ireland announced the closure of the “golden visa” program. Portugal followed suit and stopped a similar program in March of that year.

    Translated by RFA Staff. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Yitong Wu for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New law will allow Beijing to seize foreign government assets

    China has passed a law allowing the authorities to seize and freeze the assets of foreign states, in a move analysts say will encourage tit-for-tat “hostage diplomacy.”

    The country’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed the Foreign State Immunity law on Friday, in a move state media said would “safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”

    The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2024, allows Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau authorities to seize or freeze the assets of foreign states in situations where the government concerned has already taken similar action against Chinese assets on foreign soil, state news agency Xinhua reported.

    “Once a foreign state abolishes, restricts or downgrades the immunity it has granted to China, China will have the right to take necessary countermeasures in accordance with the principle of reciprocity,” Xinhua said.

    But the law doesn’t affect privileges and immunities enjoyed by foreign diplomatic missions, consular posts, special missions, missions to international organizations, delegations to international conferences, nor the privileges accorded to foreign heads of state, heads of government, foreign ministers, and other officials of comparable status.

    Analysts said the law is part of a slew of recent legislation targeting foreign entities and individuals in China that includes recent amendments to the Counterespionage Law, and a Foreign Relations Law.

    Elastic definition

    Chinese authorities have typically employed a highly elastic definition of what constitutes a state secret, and national security charges are frequently leveled at journalists, rights lawyers and activists, often based on material they posted online.

    “This kind of legislation means they have another tool they can use … to bring a lot of diplomatic pressure to bear to achieve their aims,” Hong Kong lawyer and current affairs commentator Sang Pu commented on the law. “They can claim that they are only acting in accordance with their laws.”

    ENG_CHN_HostageDiplomacy_09042023.2.jpeg
    “This kind of legislation means they have another tool they can use … to bring a lot of diplomatic pressure to bear to achieve their aims,” says Hong Kong lawyer and current affairs commentator Sang Pu, speaking about the new law. Credit: Zhong Guangzheng

    “This is an important part of China’s Wolf Warrior diplomacy, and another step forward in its diplomatic bullying of other countries,” Sang said. “It’s part of a comprehensive foreign policy intended to confront Western liberal democracies.”

    Under the law, a foreign state will be deemed to have consented to the jurisdiction of Chinese courts if it files a lawsuit, or if it is named as a plaintiff or a defendant in a lawsuit accepted by a Chinese court.

    Commercial activities by foreign states could spark legal action in China if the actions “have had a direct effect in Chinese territory even though they took place outside Chinese territory.”

    That includes transactions of goods or services, investments, borrowing and lending, and other acts of a commercial nature that do not constitute an exercise of sovereign authority, according to the China Law Translate website.

    Lunghwa University of Science and Technology assistant professor Lai Jung Wei said the ruling Chinese Communist Party appears to believe that foreign countries are busy infiltrating China, much as their agents and supporters are infiltrating other countries.

    “A lot of their state-owned enterprises take the guise of private enterprises to infiltrate the rest of the world,” Lai said. “They do this because the party has to be in control of everything – it’s a party-state.”

    “And they use the same logic to view the rest of the world, and they are worried that the rest of the world is going to start doing it to them,” he said.

    ‘Hostage diplomacy’

    Lai said it’s another card Beijing – which has repeatedly hit out at sanctions against its officials over its human rights record – can play in future diplomatic wrangles.

    “[They’re saying] if you refuse to back down, we can use this against you, or as a form of retaliation if you do similar things to us,” he said. “But the legislation is inseparable from party rule.”

    “To put it bluntly, it’s a form of political security for the Xi Jinping dictatorship,” he said.

    ENG_CHN_HostageDiplomacy_09042023.3.jpg
    Canadians Michael Kovrig [right] and Michael Spavor, shown in March 2023, were taken into custody by Chinese authorities shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request. They were held for more than two years in China before being released. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Pool/AP

    China was widely criticized for its “hostage diplomacy” when it arrested and jailed Canadian nationals following the arrest of a top Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018 pending a U.S. extradition request.

    Sang said it’s noteworthy that the law will be enacted in Hong Kong and Macau as well as in mainland China, suggesting that there is now scant difference between the three jurisdictions.

    “Hong Kong is getting more and more similar to mainland China,” he said.

    Reports emerged last year that China was trying to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing.

    Simon Cheng, a former employee of the British Consulate General in Hong Kong, told Radio Free Asia that Chinese state security police were insistent that he draw a floor plan of the consulate for them during his interrogations during a 15-day detention in August 2019.

    Cheng warned in an October 2022 interview that Beijing will continue to tighten control on what it views as potentially hostile “foreign forces” that it blames for inciting the 2019 protest movement in Hong Kong.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Raymond Cheng for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ASIC suspends FTX financial services licence

    Beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange FTX has had the financial services licence of its Australian subsidiary suspended by the corporate watchdog after the company filed for bankruptcy. While the suspension runs until May 2023, the firm will still be able to provide limited financial services in relation to the termination of existing derivatives with clients until December…

    The post ASIC suspends FTX financial services licence appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.com.

  • The US Owes Afghanistan Reparations, Not Starvation

    A man carries his daughter as people queue to enter the passport office at a checkpoint in Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 19, 2021.

    During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I particularly relished lingering over breakfasts on chilly winter mornings with my young hosts who were on their winter break from school. Seated on the floor, wearing coats and hats and draped with blankets, we’d sip piping hot green tea as we shared fresh, warm wheels of bread purchased from the nearest baker.

    But this winter, for desperate millions of Afghans, the bread isn’t there. The decades-long U.S. assault on Afghanistan’s people has now taken the vengeful form of freezing their shattered, starving country’s assets.

    When I was in Afghanistan, our rented spaces, like most homes in the working class area where we lived, lacked central heating, refrigerators, flush toilets, and clean tap water. My Afghan friends lived quite simply, yet they energetically tried to share resources with people who were even less well-off.

    They helped impoverished mothers earn a living wage by manufacturing heavy, life-saving blankets and then distributed the blankets in refugee camps where people had no money to buy fuel. They also organized a school for child laborers, working out ways to give the children’s families food rations in compensation for time spent studying rather than working as street vendors in Kabul.

    Some of my young friends had conversations with me and with others in our group who had, between 1996 and 2003, traveled to Iraq where we witnessed the consequences of U.S.-led economic sanctions that directly contributed to the deaths of an estimated half million Iraqi children under the age of five. I remember the young Afghans I told this to shaking their heads, confused. They wondered why any country would want to punish infants and children who couldn’t possibly control a government.

    After visiting Afghanistan late last year, Dominik Stillhart, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said he felt livid over the collective punishment being imposed on Afghans through the freezing of the country’s assets. Referring to $9.5 billion of Afghan assets presently frozen by the United States, he recently emphasized that economic sanctions “meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to survive.” The myopic effort to punish the Taliban by freezing Afghan assets has left the country on the brink of starvation.

    These $9.5 billion of frozen assets belong to the Afghan people, including those going without income and farmers who can no longer feed their livestock or cultivate their land. This money belongs to people who are freezing and going hungry, and who are being deprived of education and health care while the Afghan economy collapses under the weight of U.S. sanctions.

    ***

    Recently, I received an email from a young friend in Kabul:

    “Living conditions are very difficult for people who do not have bread to eat and fuel to heat their homes,” the young friend wrote. “A child died from cold in a house near me, and several families came to my house today to help them with money. One of them cried and told me that they had not eaten for forty-eight hours and that their two children were unconscious from the cold and hunger. She had no money to treat and feed them. I wanted to share my heartache with you.”

    Forty-eight members of Congress have written to U.S. President Joe Biden calling for the unfreezing of Afghanistan’s assets. “By denying international reserves to Afghanistan’s private sector—including more than $7 billion belonging to Afghanistan and deposited at the [U.S.] Federal Reserve—the U.S. government is impacting the general population.”

    The Congressmembers added, “We fear, as aid groups do, that maintaining this policy could cause more civilian deaths in the coming year than were lost in twenty years of war.”

    For two decades, the United States’ support for puppet regimes in Afghanistan made that country dependent on foreign assistance as though it were on life support. 95% of the population, more than three-quarters of whom are women and children, remained below the poverty line while corruption, mismanagement, embezzlement, waste and fraud benefited numerous warlords, including U.S. military contractors.

    After the United States invaded their country and embroiled them in a pointless twenty-year nightmare, what the United States owes the Afghan people is reparations, not starvation.

    The eminent human rights advocate and international law professor Richard Falk recently emailed U.S. peace activists encouraging an upcoming February 14 Valentine Day’s initiative, which calls for the unfreezing of Afghan assets, lifting any residual sanctions, and opposing their maintenance. Professor Falk acknowledges that the disastrous U.S. mission in Afghanistan amounted to “twenty years of expensive, bloody, destructive futility that has left the country in a shambles with bleak future prospects.”

    “After the experience of the past twenty years,” Falk writes in the email, “it seems time for the Afghans to be allowed to solve their problems without outside interference. I am sure many people of good will tried to help Afghanistan achieve more humane results than were on the agenda of the Taliban, but foreign interference particularly by the United States is not the way to achieve positive state-building goals.”

    Several friends and I were able to send a small amount of money to the friend who wrote and shared with us her heartache over being unable to help needy neighbors. “Thank you for hearing our Afghan pain,” she and her spouse responded.

    Now is a crucial time to listen and not to look away.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset”: Calls Grow to Keep Student Loan Moratorium

    “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset”: Calls Mount to Cancel Debt & Halt Wealth Transfer to the Rich

    As calls grow for Biden to extend the moratorium on student debt, we speak with the Debt Collective’s Astra Taylor and feature her new film for The Intercept, “Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset,” animated by artist Molly Crabapple. The $15 trillion in U.S. household debt is “a form of wealth transfer” from the poor to the rich, Taylor says. “People are in debt by design.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: Rights groups and lawmakers are calling on the Biden administration to extend the moratorium on student loan payments that’s been in place since the pandemic started. The Biden administration announced in August it would extend the pause for about 42 million people, but that extension is set to end in less than two months, on January 31st, 2022, even as many continue to struggle during the pandemic.

    On Wednesday, 200 groups, led by the Student Borrower Protection Center, sent a letter to Biden saying, quote, “There is a broad consensus among borrowers, advocates, industry, regulators, enforcement officials, and lawmakers that a rush to resume student loan payments is a recipe for disaster and will result in widespread confusion and distress for student loan borrowers.”

    Also this week, a group of 14 lawmakers, led by Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, called on Biden to waive the interest on student loans even after payment collection resumes, writing, quote, “Accumulating student loan interest can be a daunting challenge for borrowers with the lowest incomes or the heaviest student debt burdens,” unquote. They noted the debt crisis has also disproportionately impacted Black, Latinx and Native communities.

    During his campaign, Biden vowed to cancel federal student loan debt and fix the “broken” student loan system. But his administration has said the extension pausing payments through next January would be the final one.

    For more on the debt crisis, we’ll be joined in a minute by Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors. But first, I want to turn to her new animated short film she’s publishing today at The Intercept, with illustrations by artist Molly Crabapple, called Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset.

    ASTRA TAYLOR: The American dream used to be owning your own home. Now it’s being debt-free. Altogether, Americans owe a record-breaking $15 trillion and counting. Sold as a lifeline, debt is too often an anchor, dragging people down with compounding interest and fees, pulling wealth and resources from the working class to bloat Wall Street’s bottom line.

    Every debt we hold is someone else’s asset, with our monthly payments providing steady revenue streams for greedy creditors. Households with credit card debt pay around $1,155 a year in interest alone. Americans now die owing an average of $62,000, much of it credit card debt.

    A significant amount of the $770 billion of credit card debt slushing around is medical bills — ambulance rides, doctor’s visits and surgeries paid for with the swipe of a little plastic card. Then there’s the additional $140 billion of medical debt in collections combined with an estimated $50 billion in back rent and $1.4 trillion in auto loans.

    Much of this debt didn’t exist a few generations ago. Consider the $1.8 trillion in student loans this country now holds, which wasn’t a problem in the 1960s, when college was often free or close to it. Ronald Reagan helped change that. He made his name by demonizing protesters on the University of Berkeley campus. In 1967, as governor of California, he pushed the university system to start charging students tuition so they would, quote, “think twice” about whether they wanted to pay to carry a picket sign.

    During his career as senator, Joe Biden advanced Reagan’s project, working to expand student lending. As a senator from Delaware, the credit card industry capital, Biden was a devoted servant of the financial sector. He fought relentlessly for 2005 legislation that weakened borrower protections and made bankruptcy more difficult for regular borrowers, strengthening the hand of the student loan and credit card industries and helping cause a wave of home foreclosures.

    But debt is not just about money. It’s about power. Debt has long been both a source of profit and a tool of social control and racial domination. The Founding Fathers knew this. Thomas Jefferson argued that debt should be canceled after natural limits, which he took to be about a generation — but only for white men like himself. In 1803, he wrote that debt should be used as a weapon against Indigenous people to steal their territory. “We shall … be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands.”

    Sharecropping, redlining, predatory lending all continued this trend, deepening racial inequities. As a result of the 2008 mortgage crisis, Black and Brown families lost upwards of 50% of their collective wealth.

    For regular debtors, even a late payment can spell disaster. A tanked credit score can make it impossible to rent an apartment or get a job. Default on your student loans? The government can seize your wages, tax refunds and Social Security. Debtors’ prisons are technically unconstitutional, but, in practice, people struggling to pay medical bills or court fees can wind up in jail.

    But not all debtors are treated so cruelly. Rich people regularly walk away from their obligations, and companies engage in strategic defaults. The banks that crashed the economy in 2008, they got bailed out. Donald Trump, the self-professed king of debt, left a string of corporate bankruptcies in his wake. And don’t forget that during the COVID pandemic the federal government spent hundreds of billions of dollars buying up bad corporate debt belonging to entities including Exxon and Walmart and offering companies, including payday lenders, forgivable loans.

    It’s time regular debtors got a break, too. It’s time for a jubilee, the erasure of debts and a rebalancing of power between regular people and elites. It’s not a new idea. Jubilee was described in the Bible, and many ancient civilizations had periodic jubilees to avert social and economic collapse. Our earliest recorded histories are stone tablets inscribed with credit ledgers. Nearly as long as debt has existed, debt cancellation has existed, too.

    Throughout history, debtors have risen up to demand relief. In the early 6th century BCE, a debtors’ riot helped nudge Ancient Athens towards democracy. The reforms, known as the shaking off of burdens, included debt absolution and an end to debt bondage. Something similar happened in Ancient Rome after debtors mounted the world’s first general strike. In the United States, indebted workers and farmers revolted in the colonial era and then again during the Great Depression. Later, the call for debt cancellation rang out at Occupy Wall Street. In recent years, striking debtors helped force the government to cancel billions of dollars in student loans.

    Abolishing medical debt, back rent and student loans would free up money now spent on debt servicing for other things. People could buy homes and start families, and the racial wealth gap would narrow. Research estimates that canceling student debt alone would boost the economy by up to $108 billion a year and create a million jobs.

    Under pressure from activists, President Biden campaigned on a promise to cancel an immediate minimum of $10,000 of student debt per borrower. Thanks to the Higher Education Act of 1965, he has the power to cancel all federal student loans. With the single signature on an executive order, President Biden can free people from student debt, giving tens of millions of people their lives and futures back. Now we need to make him do it and much more. We deserve nothing less than a jubilee.

    AMY GOODMAN: That’s the new animated short film, Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset, published today at The Intercept, with illustrations, remarkable illustrations, by the artist Molly Crabapple, narrated by Astra Taylor, who joins us now, writer, filmmaker, co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors. Her latest book is Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions.

    Astra, welcome back to Democracy Now! What a film! And kudos to Molly Crabapple. She is just a stunning illustrator and artist. If you can just start off with the title, Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset? Talk more about why you’re releasing this today and what that means.

    ASTRA TAYLOR: Thank you so much for having me on and for premiering the film. And absolutely, Molly and her team, Kim Boekbinder and Jim Batt, did an amazing job.

    Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset. One of the powers of animation is that it allows us to make something visible that we can’t normally see. So much of debt, you know, is invisible. And one thing this film shows is it shows debtors, but it also follows the chains of debt back to the people who hold our debts as assets, the people that we pay monthly, who collect the interest and fees, you know, who are essentially the 1%. These debt payments are a form of wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. And so, this film, one thing it does, in a playful but really serious style, is show that. So, there’s lots of evidence that debt is accelerating inequality, it’s compounding racial inequities, you know, because, again, these are — these debts that weigh us down are somebody else’s investments, and they’re very, very, very invested in protecting those assets.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Astra Taylor, I mean, the figure that you give, a record-breaking $15 trillion of debt, can you provide some sense, some explanation of how the U.S. got to this point, $15 trillion?

    ASTRA TAYLOR: Well, as this film shows, you know, in seven — less than seven minutes, we travel through thousands of years. So, debt is older than capitalism. Debt is really ancient. But there’s something about the form of capitalism we live under where debt is really central.

    So, we can, for example, think back to the 1970s. You know, much of this debt, as I say in the animation, didn’t exist a few generations ago. Well, what’s happened? Wages have stagnated. Regulations on the financial sector have been rolled back. They rolled back usury limits, the limits on how much interest can be collected. So, what’s happened is that people have essentially been forced to borrow. People don’t live beyond their means; they’re denied the means to live. So, working people are robbed twice. You’re underpaid at the job, and then you’re charged interest because you’re having to borrow student loans to get an education, you’re having to go into debt for medical care, you’re having to take out a payday loan or a credit card to put food on the table. So debt has absolutely exploded.

    That $15 trillion is a mortgage, mortgage debt for people — we have to go into debt to procure housing; $770 billion of credit card debt. As I say in the film, a lot of that is medical debt because people don’t have adequate healthcare in this country. If you have universal healthcare, medical debt doesn’t exist. So this is absolutely a problem that isn’t just intrinsic to human existence. It’s a consequence of political and economic choices. And as this situation has evolved, the creditors, the financial sector have amassed more and more power over Washington. And that’s why it’s so important to tell the economic story and the political story side by side, as this film does.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Astra, one of the things that’s very striking and, of course, also disturbing in the film is the fact that you say that Americans, on average now, when they die, owe $62,000 in debt. Can you explain what happens to this debt after someone passes away? Is it erased, or is it passed on to the next generation?

    ASTRA TAYLOR: Yeah, $62,000 of debt, that is an immense amount. So, not all is literally passed on to people’s family and heirs, but what it does is it impedes families’ ability to build intergenerational wealth. So, what we have is some people, who have assets, building into intergenerational wealth, and others who are never able to do that. They’re never able to get ahead. So, this is particularly true, we see this, with the racial wealth gap in this country, which is for the median households about 10 to one. For families who have student debt, the racial wealth gap between Black and white families swells to 20 to one. So, it impedes people’s ability to build wealth and to thrive.

    And it also underscores — I think that powerful image of a coffin underwater with that number on it just underscores the fact that debt is a matter of life and death for people. We’re seeing this right now as the Biden administration is threatening to turn on student loan payments January 31st. We’re seeing debtors that are just absolutely not ready for that, people who are overwhelmed with anxiety, making them — you know, compounding their stress. You know, we’re just seeing that this is something that is really serious for people, and I think that illustration really drives that point home.

    AMY GOODMAN: And you say that President Biden could wipe out the debt with his signature. Can you talk about the role he’s played in expanding both student and credit card debt, and what power he has right now?

    ASTRA TAYLOR: Yes. As the animation shows, Biden is part of a long line of American presidents who have sided with creditors. I mean, we have what some scholars call a creditors’ constitution. The struggle between debtors and creditors is really essential to the founding of this country.

    But Biden has played a really significant role as the former senator from Delaware, which is the credit card capital of the world. So he was absolutely instrumental in passing 2005 bankruptcy reform, which was something that credit card industries really wanted. It repealed bankruptcy protections for student debtors with private loans. So he has been on the wrong side of this.

    That said, because of organizing, because of the group the Debt Collective, which I founded and I organize with, and other activists, you know, he was forced to run on a promise of $10,000 across-the-board debt relief, and even more for students from certain colleges. And he has the authority. We know this. The very same authority that Donald Trump used to do the student loan payment pause is the authority that President Biden can use to cancel all federal student debt — not just $10,000, not just $50,000, but all of it.

    And it’s absolutely a moral imperative that he does it. A recent study showed that 90% of fully employed student debtors are not financially secure enough for the payments to go back on. And it will boost the economy. It will have all of these beneficial effects. It will narrow that racial wealth gap I mentioned from 20 to one for borrowers to three to one between Black and white households. And so we’re organizing for that. The Debt Collective is calling for a week of action, with an action in D.C. January 18th. We have to push him and make him do it, just like the film says.

    AMY GOODMAN: And who does get bailed out? I mean, it’s not like, “Well, we just can’t afford to wipe out these debts.” Talk about the payday loan operators, the large corporations.

    ASTRA TAYLOR: We can’t afford not to wipe out these debts. Again, if we have a jubilee, we, the 99%, will all be richer as a result. There are so many benefits to this. But a jubilee, as you’ve pointed out here, you know, is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Debt cancellation happens all the time. It just happens for wealthy individuals and for corporations, those companies who have the lawyers who advise them on their strategic defaults, the banks that can get bailed out after 2008.

    So, what we saw in 2020 when the coronavirus hit was the government stepping in in a massive way, buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of bad corporate debt belonging to the biggest companies in the country, offering payday lenders and other predators forgivable loans. You know, we need to extend this mercy, this generosity, to debtors, who have not done anything wrong. People are in debt by design. This is a system that gives people no other options for making ends meet. That’s what happens when you have a country with a minimum wage of $7.25. So, a jubilee is possible and is necessary, and debtors need to fight for it.

    AMY GOODMAN: Astra Taylor, we want to thank you so much for being with us, writer, filmmaker and co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors; latest book, Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions; co-writer and narrator of the new animated short film that we’ve just premiered, Your Debt Is Someone Else’s Asset.

    Next up, we look at “The Invisible Wall: Inside the Secretive Libyan Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe.” Stay with us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Inequality Distorts Economics

    The growing global concentration of wealth has made basic data on household savings, the trade deficit, and overseas assets increasingly unreliable.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.