Debt, Democracy and the Politics of Forgiveness
- Dougald Lamont, MLA St. Boniface and Leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party
Today (January 6, 2020) is Ukrainian Christmas Eve. And it’s also Epiphany, for those who celebrate. An epiphany also means when you have a sudden realization — a moment of insight. Sometimes it’s an insight that changes your life because you see things in a whole new way.
I don’t know if I can deliver that for you today, but I hope I can start.
I’ll be talking about forgiveness, debt, and democracy.
I know some of you read an interview with me in the Faith Section of the Winnipeg Free Press.
It’s funny that I was interviewed for a couple of reasons. It was the first time since I was elected leader, more than two years ago, that anyone sat down with me to ask my personal views on anything. It’s because I posted a quote from the Bible after the provincial election, from Ecclesiastes — that “the race is not always to the swift.” Time and chance happens to everyone.
I recognize that faith is at the core of a person’s being, and that there are incredibly important lessons to be drawn from faith.
While I have a lot of respect for people’s faith and convictions, I am not very religious. I do believe there are mysteries that can’t be explained.
My brother on the other hand, not only converted to Catholicism, he has several degrees in theology. He has literally taught priests in seminary. So for me to be featured on the Faith Page is a little like my brother being featured in a Rolling Stone.
In that article, I talked about how one of the most important and overlooked ideas in Christianity is the idea of forgiveness — especially forgiving debts.
Because we are living in a harsh political climate filled with brutal accusations, blame, and calls for punishment.
A lot of this is from a book that I read, by Michael Hudson, called “and forgive them their debts…” which is a history of debt forgiveness in the ancient near east.
In the Lord’s Prayer, there is a line “and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. What is a trespass, anyway? It’s sort of this idea that we are asking forgiveness for when we offend people, and we return the favour.
But that’s not what the original translation was. The prayer is “forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us.”
There are lots of people who don’t want to believe that these are real money-debts. They want to argue that it is a spiritual debt, a psychological, or social debt.
That’s not what Hudson says. Along with being an economist, he helped run a department at Harvard that specialized in the history of the Near East.
And when you go through the archaeology and the evidence, it’s clear that forgiving debt is something that happened regularly throughout history as a way of rebalancing and renewing society.
You may have heard of the Rosetta Stone. It’s a stone that had the same text in three languages on it — Greek and two kinds of Egyptian. Because it had the same text in three languages, it helped crack the code of reading Egyptian hieroglyphics.
What was the text? It is one of the most famous artifacts in all of history and we generally don’t know what was written on it.
It was a contract graven in stone, from the ruler of Egypt, granting debt forgiveness in three languages, so that everyone could understand it.
It’s a Jubilee, and it really happened.
The other thing people found in archaeological digs was clay tablets. They are covered with accounting tables and debt. They were soft clay and you pressed letters into the clay using a stylus. If you had your debts eliminated, you could dip it in water, and wipe it clean.
A clean slate.
What Hudson makes clear is that Jesus is acting in this tradition a long Judeo-Christian tradition and that the Bible has references to jubilees in ways we don’t realize.
Hudson says it’s clear from the historical context of the Ten Commandments, that many of them are about condemning behaviour by bad moneylenders.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife” is not just about adultery — it is because when you borrowed money from someone, you might have to send your wife to live with them as collateral.
Not “using the Lord’s name in vain” is because people would swear an oath on fraudulent debt contracts.
When Jesus says, he is “proclaiming the Year of the Lord” — he wants to proclaim a jubilee year, to save the poor and the rest of society from their crushing debts.
At the time, almost all of the lending was through temples. The temple could forgive debts. That is why Jesus beat the moneylenders, overturned their tables, and kicked them out of the temple. It is also no accident that he was arrested and executed just a few days later.
You might wonder what does any of this, 2,000 year ago, has to do with democracy or today’s economy.
There is an unbroken thread from then until now. There is a reason why so many banks and government buildings still look like Greek and Roman Temples, including the Manitoba Legislature
In the chamber of the Manitoba Legislature, there are two major statues flanking the throne where the speaker sits.
On the Speaker’s Right is Moses, holding the ten commandments — which Hudson says refers to reining in crooked lenders.
On the Speaker’s Right is Solon. He was a statesman and philosopher in ancient Athens.
When he came to power 2600 years ago, Athens was facing an economic crisis. Almost all the agricultural land was in the hands of a few aristocrats, the poor couldn’t support themselves and were deeply in debt.
Solon’s solution was a debt jubilee, as part of critical reforms that laid the foundation for democracy in ancient Greece.
So right there, in the very heart of Manitoba Government, is a statue to a historical figure who freed his people from debt.
That’s not the only statue. When the clean slate was declared, it was signalled by holding up a torch.
That’s what the Golden Boy does on top of the legislature.
That’s also what the Statue of Liberty does. The torch of freedom that the the Statue of liberty holds up is a signal of a clean slate and debt forgiveness.
And that idea of freedom from debt is incredibly important. It should be incredibly important to Liberals, because our political party has the idea of liberty built right into our name.
For Liberals today, what should matter is the freedoms of individual human beings — Not just states, or governments, or corporations.
All of this is relevant today because our economy — the Canadian economy, and the world economy — is being strangled by personal debt.
You’ll read little stories about it in the media. Canadians personal debt is incredibly high and people aren’t paying it down.
There’s an article in the National Post today because insolvencies are going up in Alberta, and one on CBC about foreclosures are going up in Fort MacMurray.
Here’s an article on Vancouver insolvencies:
https://betterdwelling.com/city/vancouver/greater-vancouver-households-are-going-broke-mega-fast/
And there was another article that said Canadians fear debt almost as much as they fear death.
There is a general attitude that people shouldn’t spend more money than they have, and that if they have any debt, it’s because they were splurging on luxuries.
That’s not the case.
The entire Canadian economy is about $2-trillion. Canadian households owe more than $2.2-trillion. Three-quarters of it is mortgages. A roof over your head is not a luxury. It is a necessity of life.
The Globe and Mail published a study that showed that in various suburbs across Canada, there are areas where people are paying 20% of their income on interest.
1 in 6 insolvencies in Ontario are because of student loans.
https://www.hoyes.com/press/joe-debtor/the-student-debtor/
Seniors may use credit cards to pay for medications.
A place to live, a degree and medication are not luxuries. That is what people have been spending their loans on.
A place to live, a degree and medication are not luxuries. That is what people have been spending their loans on.
Now back in 2008, there was the biggest stock market meltdown in decades. We’re still recovering from it.
And if you’ve seen The Big Short or read any books about it, that crisis was caused by personal debt — by mortgages.
Bad mortgages. Banks were giving out what were called “NINJA” loans — that stands for
“No income,
No Job
No Assets.” NINJA.
Now you might wonder, who would ever give a loan of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to someone with no income, no job and no assets?
But that’s what a student loan is. We expect young people to start their lives with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt.
This is absolutely critical. Because this debt is what is choking off our economy. This debt is why the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, and why the middle class is being squeezed.
It is driving our politics — because people in Alberta and Saskatchewan took out mortgages that made sense during an oil boom, then they lost their jobs and now risk losing everything.
And that makes people desperate and angry. And that’s why we are facing calls for Wexit.
This takes us back to democracy, and forgiveness.
This is also where Conservative governments are doing everything wrong. Because they are following economic policies that are based in blame and punishment.
All the Pallister government does is blame the Federal Liberals and the Manitoba NDP.
There are lots of problems with that. One is that leaders should take responsibility and be accountable for their decisions.
The federal election was defined by the conservatives blaming Justin Trudeau for everything — even making up things he didn’t do.
When people are angry and suffering, they may want to make someone pay for it. That’s where the blame and punishment comes in. That is the psychology of austerity. It is satisfying to the people who are doing it, but it doesn’t work.
So the idea is that things have gone wrong, and the PCs are going to punish people for it.
Now, it wasn’t teachers, or nurses, or universities, or municipalities, or the poor that are to blame. It wasn’t the government of Manitoba.
It was the private financial sector.
What happens is that every time we have a recession, a whole bunch of people and businesses go bankrupt. Insolvencies are rising right now and are especially bad in Alberta and Ontario.
What happens in recessions is that when all that property goes up for sale at fire sale prices, people with means snap it up. So small and medium-sized properties get gobbled up.
So the middle-class ends up being like a mouse being crushed by a snake. Every time the mouse breathes out, the snake tightens its coils a little more.
But the private financial sector in Canada got $66-billion in bailouts. (The total was closer to $114-billion. The )
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/04/30/canada-bank-bailout_n_1466219.html
Around the world, it was about $15-trillion — and it hasn’t stopped.
Now, it is hard to get a handle on the difference between millions, billions and trillions. There’s a handy guide online:
A million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.
Just to put that $15-trillion in perspective, that is the province of Manitoba’s budget for several hundred years. It was supposed to create jobs but what it has done is inflated the stock market and driven up the price of real estate.
It wasn’t taxpayers’ money, but it was public money. Central Banks, like the Bank of Canada, the U.S. Federal reserve and the European Central Bank printed new money and used it to bail out banks.
So this is the thing. Our prosperity is at stake and debt-driven misery is slowing the economy — driving greater inequality, and leading to extreme politics.
The Federal Goverment has the tools and power for a jubilee. Governments can and should crack down on predatory lenders and forgive odious debts.
It has happened before. The federal government wrote off Manitoba’s Depression debts in 1948. Farmers in Saskatchewan had their debts written off. The German economic miracle after the second world war happened after a debt jubilee in 1948.
The PC Government has written off $200-million in debt for the Bombers stadium, for Pete’s sake.
There are practical measures governments can take. People think that its technology, or trade, or taxes. Economists and politicians have basically thrown up their hands and said “this is just the way the world is going, it’s inevitable.”
It’s debt.
We cannot understate the misery of poverty and debt.
And we need to talk about a jubilee because that is what we need. It is an opportunity for renewal.
But it is not recognized.
Michael Hudson mentions a Stanford Historian, Walter Scheidel who has written a book called “The Great Levellers” in which he recognizes that “over time, there is a tendency for the wealthy to win out.” Scheidel thinks the only way it can be reversed or changed is through disasters — “mass warfare, violent revolution, lethal pandemics or state collapse. He does not acknowledge progressive tax policy, debt write-offs or the return of land to smallholders as a way to prevent or reverse the concentration of wealth.”
Given the option between mass warfare, revolution, or the plague on the one hand, and debt forgiveness on the other, the choice is pretty clear.
There is nothing inevitable about it. We can choose differently — if our democratically elected governments are willing to take back the economy from a handful of people who want to run it for their own purpose, and run it for the benefit of everyone instead.
Now, I don’t want to make this sound easier than it is. It is not just a case of waving a magic wand, but the tools and the institutions to make this happen all exist. The Government of Canada, the Bank of Canada have the authority and in fact the mandate to make it happen.
In ancient times, it was easier to cancel debts because much of it was owed to government. Today, you want to make sure that you are not bankrupting lenders. It may not mean getting rid of all debts — just reducing them until they are manageable and coming up with a system that is fair is also critical.
The real challenge is intellectual and political. Because people have trouble wrapping their head around the idea that some debts should be forgiven. The real history of debt forgiveness and jubilees has been forgotten or ignored.
There may be people who say that this is weak, or it is the easy way out.
Forgiveness is not easy, it is hard. If it were easy, we would see it all the time.
Let’s be clear, it doesn’t mean we forgive everything, or that we are somehow a pushover. When Jesus cast out the moneylenders, he thrashed them with ropes.
But when it comes to what Liberals stand for, this is an issue of personal and individual freedom. It is an issue of democracy and whether Manitobans and Canadians are able to be free and have control over their lives to support ourselves and our families.
And it is a radical change. But these are radical times and it may take radical measures to restore moderation, stability, and shared growth.
This is a fundamental change. It is politics based on forgiveness instead of punishment and retribution. It is the way forward. A new way forward. For everyone.
There will be people who will say that it can’t be done or it shouldn’t be done. The reality is that for ten years, governments around the world printed $15-trillion dollars in public to bail out private banks and some of the wealthiest people in the world.
If we can do that, we can certainly afford a jubilee that will help individuals and their governments.
Thank you.
