Our Big Fat Debt

I have a question. As consumers, business owners and ratepayers, why do we borrow from foreign-owned commercial banks - at high rates of interest - when we could be creating our own money supply and lending it into the economy at nil interest? We have the publicly owned Reserve Bank all ready to do the job.

And we have done it before - decades of state housing were funded with Reserve Bank credit. Farmers enjoyed great prosperity (and passed it on to consumers) through interest-free overdrafts from the Rural Bank (a branch of the Reserve Bank.) Ditto for the various Marketing Boards.

Right now, as I write this, New Zealand has a total debt of more than four hundred billion dollars. Both major parties have made a big deal about how the government's overseas debt has been wiped out. The reality is, debt has been transfered to the private sector - household and mortgage debt, business and corporate debt - which is growing more quickly than any of the parties in Parliament know what to do about.

This frightening total means an average of almost $100,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in New Zealand.

You might be thinking, "I'm all right, Jack, I haven't got any debt." Well, congratulations, but you are still paying for it. We all pay, with every litre of milk and loaf of bread we buy. We pay with our taxes, our rates and our insurance premiums. The price of every good and every service is loaded with that debt burden.

Dang. And you thought you were sweet. And it gets worse.

The compounding interest on that humongous debt, billions every year, is siphoned out of our hard-earned wages and mostly sent off overseas, into the pockets of the already obscenely rich.

And the Leader of the Opposition wants to borrow more money to build toll roads. Excuse me? If he and his Money Market Mates get into power this election, we will all be going down the toll road of borrowing ourselves to death.

If you are like me, and you don't like the road we're going down, have the courage to change direction. Turn off, get out of the car and get into public transport. Vote Democrats for social credit  this election, and get out of debt.

BTW, this was authorised by Mark Atkin, 5 Tarras Grove, Lower Hutt.