Only trade surplus is wealth.
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “智 本社” (ID: zhibenshe0-1) author: SD president.
In 594 BC, a debt crisis was sweeping the city of Athens.
A stele stands on many lands within the city-state, and this stele indicates that five-sixths of the harvest in that area belongs to the creditor, and the peasants themselves can only keep one sixth.
These farmers are called “Liuyi Han”. If the harvest is not enough to pay off the debt, the creditor has the right to sell the “Liu Yi Han” and his wife and children into slavery.
Therefore, a large number of farmers became debt slaves, and public complaints arose at once; the peasants who had nowhere to go led to riots, trying to divide up the land and property of the rich.
The rich think that paying the debt is the responsibility of performing the contract. The debt problem has intensified social conflicts, and Athens is on the verge of fierce conflict and even civil war.
At this time, the new politician Solon, a distinguished politician in the history of Athens, took office. On the first day he served as the chief executive officer of Athens, he issued a “relief order”.
He ordered people to pull out the obligatory monument standing on the mortgaged land; abolish all debts and prohibit borrowing to use personal mortgages; farmers who sell their debts will be released; all land mortgaged due to debts will be returned to the owner .
Debtors are all cheering, but creditors and nobles who are desperately angry move around to attack Solon. Engels said: “In the revolution carried out by Solon, it should be to damage the creditor’s property to protect the debtor’s property.” Solon had to appease the nobility in exchange for interest.
Athens is lucky. Solent, the wise hero, resolved a social crisis.
Solon once wrote a psalm: “People who do evil often get rich, and good people tend to be poor; however, we do not want to exchange our morality with their wealth, because morality always exists, and wealth is changing every day Master. “
However, for thousands of years, the conflict between the rich and the poor has been entangled with debt and morality. Debt conflicts have caused countless economic crashes, social unrest, political collapses, and even brought killings and wars.
Moses Finley, a famous scholar who studied ancient history, said that all revolutionary movements in ancient times had the same step: “Cancel debt and redistribute land.”
This is a political and interest struggle issue.
The ancients said: “Kill your life to pay for your debts and pay back your debts”, “Repay your debts with penalties, and pay off your debts.
This is a matter of moral and legal balance.
An American proverb says: “If you owe the bank $ 100,000, then your property belongs to the bank. If you owe the bank $ 100 million, then the bank belongs to you.”
This is the windRisk and market principles.
In modern times, debt has gradually shifted from excessive moral standards to market targets. Borrowing is defined as a market behavior, not a moral behavior. Debt is to achieve better allocation of resources in time and space by providing liquidity.
The essence of debt is to provide liquidity. Borrowing means that the ownership and risk of capital are transferred from the debtor to the creditor.
So, the moral relationship of debt evolves into a contractual relationship between rights and obligations.
Cognition of debt is the key to modern market awareness. Business means risk, and debt is the core of risk. If the capital is insolvent, is it possible to “debt is not repaid”, that is, debt exemption? If considered according to market principles, debt exemption is part of market behavior.
In this way, the bankruptcy law matching the debt exemption was born.
In 1705, the UK introduced the debt exemption system for the first time.
In 1787, at the end of the US Constitutional Conference, a representative from Rhode Island named Charles Pinkney proposed to join the bankruptcy clause. This proposal was passed almost unanimously and was included in Article 8 of the US Constitution: “Congress has the power to pass a unified law on bankruptcy.”
Madison, the founder of the United States, wrote in the “Federalist Collection” at the time: “The power to formulate a unified bankruptcy law is closely related to commercial norms, which can effectively prevent parties from using their property in different states or taking their property. Fraud committed to a different state. “[1]
Some people believe that the debtor can use the bankruptcy law to engage in “legal fraud”, and the proponents of the bankruptcy law are just the opposite. This law can effectively prevent fraud.
In fact, bankruptcy law, debt exemption, entrepreneurship, limited liability, and risk management are the same market rules. Business means risk, and the limited liability system can maximize the release of risks and stimulate entrepreneurship; debt exemption and bankruptcy laws are necessary conditions for the rise of the modern market and its implementation.
The recognition of debt and the evolution of the bankruptcy law is a history of repeated games of complicated politics, interests, creditor groups and populism.
In 1800, the birth of the first bankruptcy law in the United States was part of a long-term struggle between the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersons on the founding principles and ideology, and was also the result of a game of interest between the northern business community and the southern farmers.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the US bankruptcy law was set up three times, and it was reduced to a “night pot” to save the economic crisis and a tool for obtaining political votes. The financial panic of 1797 gave birth to the bankruptcy law of 1800; the famous panic of 1837 gave birth to the bankruptcy law of 1841; the panic of 1857 gave birth to the bankruptcy law of 1867.
Every time there is a panic, American society can basically reach a consensus: the businessman chased by the debt is unable to make a comeback, the new businessman is unwilling to expand because of fear of riskProduction saves the crisis. However, every time after the crisis, speculators would use the bankruptcy law to gain profits. The southern forces worried that their land and property would be legally taken away by the speculators, and they tried to kick the “night pot” back to the bed.
The economic panic of 1893 gave birth to the bankruptcy law of 1898. The legislative history of this law can be called “a history of Odyssey that has been frustrated and nearly died for 18 years.” However, this decree skillfully balanced the relationship between creditors and debtors and became a stable bankruptcy law. Since then, the United States has established a modern bankruptcy law.
Since then, bankruptcy laws have tended to improve in the game between state interventionism and liberalism. In the 60s and 70s of the last century, American consumerism prevailed, investment banks rose, and large-scale consumer credit and housing loans triggered a massive wave of personal defaults. In the era of asset bubbles and debt inflation, the bankruptcy law encountered new challenges and also shouldered new missions and responsibilities.
Now, the global debt tide is rising, the housing bubble is expanding, the company ’s debt ratio is high, the number of housing companies ’bankruptcies is increasing, and some companies are in a bankruptcy dilemma. Investment fund redemption crisis, housing loan and consumer credit problems have emerged. Many entrepreneurs, public figures, wealthy second generation and mortgage lenders have joined the list of dishonest enforcers, and even a small number of college students have fallen into “naked loans.” Lao Luo promised to “sell the arts” to pay off debts. Lao Jia, who is making cars in the US, is applying for personal bankruptcy.
Mr. Cao Dewang, founder of Fuyao Glass Group, urged not to use “old lai” to describe bankrupt entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs ’businesses are risk businesses, and they should be encouraged to continue their struggle. He also repeatedly called for legislation to allow private companies to go bankrupt. Now many shadow banks are recovering debts. If companies are not allowed to go bankrupt, the consequences will be unimaginable and cause social problems.
David A. Skir, a famous American jurist, in the “World of Debt” endowed the “spirit of the times” to debt and bankruptcy:
“American bankruptcy law is unique in the world. Compared with other countries, its biggest feature may be that American individuals and companies do not seem to regard bankruptcy as the last resort, so they have not at all costs Avoid bankruptcy. No one wants to end a bankruptcy, but the debtors in the United States only view bankruptcy as a way to prosperity, not the end of the drama. “[2]
In response to the real needs of the Great Epidemic, this article uses the US bankruptcy law as a clue to explore the evolution of debt and the market principles behind bankruptcy, and analyze the game between politics, economy, and civil power.
This article logic:
One, three, three wastes: the political struggle between the US Federalists and the Democratic Republican Party
Second, Odyssey history: a game of interests between populists and creditor groups
Three, go far: to protect the creditor and protect the debtor ’s judicial balance
(The text is 11,000 words, the reading time is about 35 minutes, please be patient to read, you can also share or collect first)
After the Great Depression, nationalism entered the stage of history, economic freedom was inhibited, and the cause of bankruptcy entered a depression cycle.
In the 30 years since the “Chandler Act”, the number of corporate restructurings has dropped significantly, and the number of bankruptcy filings fluctuating around 100 each year. The downturn in bankruptcy is not necessarily a good thing for long-term economic growth.
In the 1960s, lawmakers began asking Congress to conduct a comprehensive review of the bankruptcy law. Unlike the past 100 years, each legislative evolution of the bankruptcy law originated from the economic depression. The demand for this law revision comes from the economic boom.
After World War II, the US economy entered an economic cycle. In the 1960s, consumerism became more and more popular, spurred by the improvement of the welfare system, steady growth of income, and the import of global cheap goods. In the 1970s, the Bretton Woods system disintegrated, investment banks rose, consumer credit borrowed from investment banks and consumerism exploded.
Synchronized with consumer credit inflation, the number of bankruptcy filings by individuals due to consumer credit bankruptcy has increased rapidly. In the 1940s, the number of individual bankruptcy filings was only more than 10,000; by the 1960s, this scale was close to 200,000. The founder of the National Consumer Law Center, Wien Contriman, pointed out at a legislative hearing that consumer debt increased from 30 billion in 1945 to 569 billion in 1974.
These two data made the lawmakers and judges at that time shudder. Because the “Chandler Law” has raised the threshold for bankruptcy by a large margin, and the bankruptcy applications have continued, the “barrier lake” of bankruptcy has grown. The objective of this revision of the bankruptcy law is how to resolve the “barrier lake” crisis of the bankruptcy cause.
Since the end of the 1960s, Congress has begun work on amending the bankruptcy law. Congress approved the establishment of the National Bankruptcy Review Committee in 1970. Three years later, the committee gave an extremely detailed investigation report. The report made a lot of reform proposals and the reasons for each reform.
They proposed the establishment of a government administrative agency, the United States Bankruptcy Administration, to assume the administrative responsibilities of the original bankruptcy judge. The Bankruptcy Committee proposed that Congress establish a unified federal property exemption standard, call for an expanded application of bankruptcy laws, and recommend increased protection for consumer debtors.
Bankruptcy judges were excluded from the bankruptcy committee, but they proposed their own bankruptcy law reform plan through the National Association of Bankruptcy Judges. The main purpose of the plan is to return bankruptcy to the era of judicial domination. Consistent with the bankruptcy committee, they also called for an expanded application of the bankruptcy law.
In 1975, the House of Representatives and the House of Representatives held hearings on the bills proposed by the Bankruptcy Committee and the Association of Bankruptcy Judges. Finally, after the compromise between the Bankruptcy Committee and the Association of Bankruptcy Judges, the two bills were merged into a bill by the Senate.
In 1978, after many extensive hearings, the Senate and the House reached an agreement