Creditors argue, for instance, that if you forgive debts for a class of debtors – say, student loans – that there will be some “free riders.” Students freed from debt will benefit, while students who were able to carry and pay off their debts had to “meet their obligations.” It is further argued that if student debts are forgiven (or “junk mortgage” loans written down to fair real estate valuations), people will expect to have bad loans written off. This is called a “moral hazard,” as if debt writedowns are a hazard to the economy, and hence, immoral.
This is a typical example of Orwellian doublespeak engineered by public relations factotums for bondholders and banks. The real hazard to every economy is the tendency for debts to grow beyond the ability of debtors to pay. If large numbers of students remain liable to pay student loans without having obtained well enough jobs to pay, this will prevent them from being able to qualify for mortgage to buy a home and start a family. Many students today are obliged to keep living with their parents, and are unable to marry. The result is deepening economic austerity as a result of the debt overhead.
Meanwhile, defaults on student loans to for-profit colleges are projected as rising toward 40%. Is it worth it to say that to prevent giving these impecunious students a “free lunch,” it is worth keeping a large swath of the population poor and unmarried?....
The basic moral financial principal should be that creditors should bear the hazard for making bad loans that the debtor couldn’t pay — like the IMF loans to Argentina and Greece. The moral hazard is their putting creditor demands over the economy’s survival.
Michael Hudson — On Finance, Real Estate And The Powers Of Neoliberalism
Mutual Aid vs Moral HazardMichael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University
