Speaking of buying up debt, does anybody else remember how, early in 2009, the Obama administration set up exchanges for private investors to buy toxic assets from financial institutions with government support? I remember Geithner announcing this with much fanfare as the program to return large banks to solvency. There was a brief controversy, and then the whole thing seemed to just disppear. My impression is that it turned out the banks didn't want to sell at a price anyone wanted to pay. But I've always been curious: what really happened? Is it public knowledge?<p>(Sorry for going off-topic... my excuse is that some of the same debt is probably involved, albeit through many layers of indirection and far downstream in the collection process.)
You know, consumer debt is probably the biggest thing slowing down the economy, even though financial institutions are wanting to saddle the average consumer with more debt. If people don't have money to buy things because they are spending money servicing debt, that slows down the whole consumer economy. The only people who win in that scenario are the banks, but they would profit more over the long term by a stronger economy than they currently do from consumer debt.
I admire the design. It's like carbon credits: you can buy pollution credits and simply not use them, if you want to do good by the environment.<p>Buying debt is much more efficient than lobbying, going through lawsuits, etc. It shouldn't be sustainable, presumably, since all these people buying up debt should raise its price. But maybe it's sustainable enough.
Anyone know if the reasoning behind not being able to buy individuals debt is legal or if technical/execution?<p>A marketplace for this kind of relief a la Kiva could be hugely powerful.
Is there a marketplace for debt online that I can visit as Joe Consumer and buy the debt of others so I can forgive it or at least offer the debt back to the person at cost? What information is likely to be public about the debtor when one purchases the debt?<p>Is there a startup business idea in this?
This sounds like the plan is to buy debt, typically in the way a collector would. I guess, i'm curious what they're accomplishing here? By this point the way I understand it the person has effectively already defaulted.
This is very similar to a projected supposed to help the Greek public debt situation. <a href="http://www.greecedebtfree.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.greecedebtfree.org/</a>