Rolling Jubilee: A Bailout by The People for The People. $15, 000,000 bought and disposed of!

[sabrina 1]

I think it would be hard to disagree that this is one of the most brilliant programs so far. Too bad that Congress saw fit to force the people to bail out the Wall St Bankers and left the People to fend for themselves.

http://rollingjubilee.org/

Maybe they just couldn't figure out a way to help the victims of those they bailed out. They are hopefully paying attention to OWS' Strike Debt which, according to Andrew Ross, a member of Strike Debt, was intended to be a 'public education' program regarding something known as the 'secondary debt market':



Occupy Wall St. Activists Buy $15 Million Personal Debt

"Our purpose in doing this, aside from helping some people along the way – there's certainly many, many people who are very thankful that their debts are abolished – our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market."

So far, and according to Rolling Jubilee, they bought all that debt for 'pennies on the dollar' and have relieved over 2,600 people of crushing debt. The cost to them for doing this was approximately $400,000. Imagine the profit there is in this secondary debt market. I'm there is insurance involved also, to cover the creditors.

Apparently buying people's debt really is big business.

The group has focussed on buying medical debt, and has acquired the $14.7m in three separate purchases, most recently purchasing the value of $13.5m on medical debt owed by 2,693 people across 45 states and Puerto Rico, Rolling Jubilee said in a press release.

“No one should have to go into debt or bankruptcy because they get sick,” said Laura Hanna, an organiser with the group. Hanna said 62% of all personal bankruptcies have medical debt as a contributing factor.

The way it works apparently, when people do not or cannot pay their debts, companies sell the debt VERY CHEAPLY to a 'secondary debt market'. Much more cheaply, according to Ross, than even he realized. The purchasers of the debt then attempt to collect all of it from the debtors, pressuring them with calls and threats etc.

Rolling Jubilee buys the debt, but rather than try to collect it, they forgive it, contacting the debtors to let them know 'you are off the hook'. Imagine the joy for people when they learn their debt has been paid?

Here's the reaction of one of those people:

Occupy Activists Buy Up People's Personal Debt

Washington — For a year and a half, 80-year-old Kentucky resident Shirley Logsdon received repeated calls from a debt collection agency over an unpaid medical bill.

Then one day, out of the blue, she received a letter saying the $983 debt had been handled -- purchased by Rolling Jubilee, a group linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"I was dumbfounded but delighted, of course," Logsdon, who is retired along with her husband of 62 years, told AFP.

"We got a letter saying that everything had been resolved -- finally it is over, you don't have to worry, you don't owe us anything. (...) I didn't know these people. It was a godsend."

If a bunch of OWS activists could be this creative in finding a way to bail out the people, surely Congress, if they put their minds to it, could come up with something at least as creative. And although, as Strike Debt admits, what they have done so far is simply a drop in the bucket in terms of helping people like this, imagine what Congress could do with all the money and power THEY have?

There is something very wrong with a country when being sick plunges you into massive debt or trying to get an education. And when this happens, that predatory profiteers can extract huge profits by buying that debt and then persecuting people already mired in problems they cannot handle.

And worse, how differently the corrupt Wall St Bankers' debt is handled by contrast.

Thanks Occupiers, for removing the notion that 'nothing can be done' for the people. And for providing those burdened with debt with information on how cheaply their debt has been purchased. As Andrew Ross says:

“So when you get called up by the debt collector, and you're being asked to pay the full amount of your debt, you now know that the debt collector has bought your debt very, very cheaply. As cheaply as we bought it. And that gives you moral ammunition to have a different conversation with the debt collector."

Btw, Rolling Jubilee got the money to purchase the debt from donors. So thanks to all those great people who actually DO care. People can donate at the first link, I believe, if they can.