> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>> I wrote a speculative passage in Wall Street that involved millions of
>> Americans suddenly writing "non serviam" on their Visa bill, conceding
>> that was unlikely, but that stranger things have happened.
>
> The populist group El Barzon organised more than a million Mexican
> defaulters in 1995-96 after the peso meltdown and rise in interest rates.
> The South African equivalent was called the 'bond boycott', and at one
> point in 1992, the largest civic network (SANCO) called for a national
> boycott by black mortgage ('bond') debtors. The real interest rate had
> climbed from -7 to +6 and SA was in the midst of its longest depression
> ever. The boycott's purpose was to halt bank relationships with the
> apartheid regime. It didn't really work, but the head of the banking assn'
> called it a 'nuclear weapon'. Those were the days.
>
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In the 30's, of course, you had neighbours banding together - farmers in the
countryside and tenants in the cities - to prevent evictions from farms and
homes in the wake of rent and mortgage defaults. This presupposes a high
degree of social solidarity, rarely seen outside a deep social crisis in
which there is a widely shared sense of vulnerability. It requires a sharp
drop in income or rise in interest rates or both which would make it
impossible for large numbers of people to service their debts, and the
corresponding determination of the authorities to coerce them into doing so.
Right now, the response of lenders and the state is to steer debtors into
counselling agencies and bankruptcy courts to squeeze whatever they can out
of them by extending and easing the terms of credit.
I can see the educative value of a campaign focusing on rate gouging and manipulation, but what concretely would such a campaign call for at htis time? For example, would it recognize the legitimacy of the counselling agencies and bankruptcy courts and seek to reform them, as well as providing assistance to debtors appearing there? Or would it instead call for a boycott of these institutions by debtors, and, if so, how would it address their fear of losing their homes, cars, and other personal possessions? It would be interesting to hear more about the experience of Patrick and others with these campaigns.