that that s a legacy thing. i think he generally believes it. i think the concern for people on the left has to be that he s coming from a place of he does want to go at the deficit now. he would do a grand bargain. i think part of the grand bargain last time was a bit of saying if i give you this, everything you should want and you still say no, because i know you ll say no then it shows you re shows that you re unreasonable. so i think we need to take that with a grain of salt. but he does subscribe this point is important. i m not huge for psychoanalyzing about public figures, but all the reporting, people that have been in meeting with the press, this is not some fabricated thing, it s not out of convenience or political pressure, he believes that we need to get our fiscal house in order, we need to reduce the projections, stabilize debt to gdp, that s a genuine priority of the president of the united states. here s what i would love for
recognition that debt was sort of the way many people attracted to occupy wall street early on. they identified as debtors. so thinking back to an early day at the park, a young man was saying step right up, write down what you re worth to the 1%. people were putting down these incredible numbers. i remember a moment of hesitation in myself when i got nervous before writing down the $45,000 i owed in students loans. the girl behind me wrote down 120,000. an older woman wrote down a large $50,000 of medical debt. people were naming this and coming out. people involved in occupy from the beginning identified as debtors. this moved them to action. strike debt emerged this summer, earlier this summer partly in solidarity with international movements against austerity and in montreal students were protesting tuition hikes and
it. no questions asked. they re calling it a rolling jubilee. since their online telethon on thursday night, they raised nearly $300,000 to buy or forgive nearly $6 million of debt. joining me are the organizer of the jubilee, and the author of occupy america. also sarah ludwig, and doug henwood, editor and publisher of the left business review. all right. so, i would debt? why has have you guys come along organizing on debt as this singular issue? well, we are part of an offshoot of occupy wall street called strike debt. strike debt emerged out of the
wearing red squares, and pointing to bigger social problems, the privatization of all sorts of social services. so strike debt has come out of that. why do you think it has the emotional resonance it does? why was that the thing? i remember in the i am the 99%, that website, right, people were writing down their story. a lot of them were around debt, revolved around debt. why do you think debt has the emotional resonance it does? because debt is isolating, individualizing, and we are living in a society where we are under so much burden of debt that it just it makes sense when you look at the 99%, and 77% of americans have debt. and those that don t have debt are effected by it. that the choices we make in our lives, for example, are based on whether we can pay back or not. and what type of jobs we ll
can i play devil s advocate? so people who support this system, they will say, a, there s long periods of time in which communities had no access to credit. it was an economic stranglehold. if you don t have access to credit, you can t take loans to start a small business or buy a house, people don t have access to credit, so let s fill that need by charging rates and having payday loans at 400% apr, which is really in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods that is our financial system. we have a separate and unequal financial system, and so in this debt that gets sold, a huge percentage of it is medical debt and credit card debt, and so you ve got people who are actually don t even know the way this is sold. it s so shoddy and flimsy, the banks, what they sell are spread sheets.