In the Sept. 17 Thursday Spotlight, the headline asked: “Is there a fix for $616 billion debt?” There are two. The first no-nonsense way, is to cancel the whole mess outright and jail the perpetrators, as Iceland did four years ago.
The second way is to use our own wholly-government owned bank for its designed and chartered purpose — capitalising our national assets at cost of administration only, returning remaining interest revenues to treasury for re-use.
This process was in continuous use in Canada for 40 years with widespread national benefit until it was quietly replaced with totally private funding in 1975. I have been unable to trace any parliamentary debate on this epochal change.
Interest rates immediately shot up, reaching an unprecedented 22 per cent in seven years and not returning until 1994. This firmly established all our government’s debts, whose total interest payments now regularly exceed $60 billion a year (say “thousand million dollars” for the real impact). But silence surrounds this whole episode, bringing conspiracy and collusion to mind since no elected party has a word to say on this dramatic change.
Its purported benefits are not proclaimed, and the process has been effectively banished from public awareness, only being awakened now by news from neighbouring North Dakota, uniquely funding itself for ninety-odd years with neither deficit nor debt.
Meanwhile, unproductive interest represents roughly ten percent of all our budgets, while that from P3s isn’t even shown. B.C.’s debt has doubled in the last 10 years, federal debt is now 300 times greater than in 1975 and the inflation inherent in the system is plainly seen in old newspapers. Forty years of different administrations blindly following the same scheme, dumbly demonstrate its usurious character. Time for change, wouldn’t you say?
Russ VindenErrington