Forum Post: Occupy Wall Street campaigners Buy-up Debt to Abolish it
Posted 11 years ago on Nov. 9, 2012, 12:35 p.m. EST by TrevorMnemonic
(5827)
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A group of campaigners linked to the Occupy Wall Street movement is buying-up distressed loans for pennies in the pound and cancelling them to "liberate debtors at random".
The Rolling Jubilee project is seeking donations to help it buy-up distressed debts, including student loans and outstanding medical bills, and then wipe the slate clean by writing them off. Individuals or companies can buy distressed debt from lenders at knock-down prices if it the borrower is in default or behind with payments and are then free to do with it as they see fit, including cancelling it free of charge.
As a test run the group spent $500 on distressed debt, buying $14,000 worth of outstanding loans and pardoning the debtors. They are now looking to expand their experiment nationwide and are asking people to donate money to the cause.
Read more here -
Rolling Jubilee! Brilliant idea and excellent post. We need to bail out the 99% as nothing will get the US economy going faster than that and bailouts for 1% are just wrong. Thanks for this really important link.
I thought this was a very creative and cool action.
Probably one of my favorites since inception.
There has to be a way to adapt and expand on this. How does one come across an instance to buy defaulted debts?
Im not sure, but it is someting that could really get a lot of attention.
Hopefully.
One question I have is how do they determine what debt to buy?
Right. I'd like to know the process. Where can defaulted debts be purchased and how?
Another thing to be very careful of is not buying debt that is older than 7 yrs. After 7 yrs its off peoples credit report so theres no worry about it anymore. But sometimes it still gets sold to other companies who will try to collect like 50 on a 700 bill.
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