Fixing the economy with no money

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Ðeadßoy

Son!c Reducer
Apr 9, 2002
14,742
113
Dead End Street
It is a slow day in the small Hampshire town of New Milton , and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.

A rich tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the hotel, and lays 2 £50.00 notes on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the hotel owner grabs the money and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the £100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the £100 and heads off to pay his bill to his supplier, the Farmer's feed store.

The guy at the feed store. takes the £100 and runs to pay his debt to the local prostitute, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer her "services" on credit.

The prostitute rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the £100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, picks up the £50.00 notes and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything... However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with a lot more optimism.
 
I know that post was meant as a joke but it's kind of a simplification of a ''problem'' I don't understand.

Canada's debt is huge, we owe a lot of money to the United States.
The US's debt is huge and they owe a bit of money to Canada.

Why can't they just erase 1 debt and substract it from the other, so that only 1 country owes money to the other.
-_-
I hate economic and politic issues...
 
because debt is bought and sold in the same way stocks are, although on paper what you suggest would be the logical reasoning, in practice that debt has been spread around the financial markets of the world so you can't just bring it all back together that easily.