<story><title>Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans&apos; personal debt</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dchmiel</author><text>It is better for yourself and the creditor to just bypass the horrible and at times abusive debt collectors, but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans.&lt;p&gt;Creditors asses your potential for default and base the rate of lending on that risk. In your scenario the rate of default would always be high therefore the rate that you borrow at would be extremely high, think loan shark high. Or you would find that no one is willing to lend money and this would cripple an important part of the financial system. Think student loans never existing.</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>Random idea:  If a creditor is about to sell your debt to a debt collector for pennies on the dollar, what if they were forced, by law, to give you right of first refusal?&lt;p&gt;For example:  I owe a credit card company $20k, but I have defaulted on the loan.  The credit card company is about to sell this debt to a collector for $1k, who will proceed to make my life miserable.  If there were such a law, the credit card company would first have to offer the debt to me for $1k.  In this scenario, I could indeed buy my own debt and we all could go on our merry way (except the debt collector).&lt;p&gt;Crazy?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jerf</author><text>&amp;quot;but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Statically, yes. However I&amp;#x27;m having a harder time mentally analyzing what this would do &lt;i&gt;dynamically&lt;/i&gt;, which is a much more interesting problem, since the real world is not static.&lt;p&gt;My first approximation is that because &amp;quot;everyone&amp;quot; would know this is something they can do with their debt, that lending would consequently become much more rare, and lenders would be &lt;i&gt;much&lt;/i&gt; more careful about securing their loans. The initial impact on the economy would probably be sharply negative; what happens after that is probably a &amp;quot;your guess is as good as mine&amp;quot; situation, even amongst economists. Attitudes about debt have varied widely throughout time and space. Some will say tightened lending will wreck the economy longterm, others would suggest that loose lending has &lt;i&gt;already&lt;/i&gt; wrecked the economy and the initial shock would simply be paying down damage already done, after which the economy would be much healthier. Which side you fall down on probably has more to do with ideology than education; given how much trouble economists have explaining even our &lt;i&gt;current&lt;/i&gt; economy I&amp;#x27;m not willing to give even experts much credence for explaining how such a different one would work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans&apos; personal debt</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dchmiel</author><text>It is better for yourself and the creditor to just bypass the horrible and at times abusive debt collectors, but this would create a perverse incentive to ALWAYS default on loans.&lt;p&gt;Creditors asses your potential for default and base the rate of lending on that risk. In your scenario the rate of default would always be high therefore the rate that you borrow at would be extremely high, think loan shark high. Or you would find that no one is willing to lend money and this would cripple an important part of the financial system. Think student loans never existing.</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>Random idea:  If a creditor is about to sell your debt to a debt collector for pennies on the dollar, what if they were forced, by law, to give you right of first refusal?&lt;p&gt;For example:  I owe a credit card company $20k, but I have defaulted on the loan.  The credit card company is about to sell this debt to a collector for $1k, who will proceed to make my life miserable.  If there were such a law, the credit card company would first have to offer the debt to me for $1k.  In this scenario, I could indeed buy my own debt and we all could go on our merry way (except the debt collector).&lt;p&gt;Crazy?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bwilliams18</author><text>Except defaulting on the loan still has a significant hit on your credit rating, and maybe buying your debt is another negative score on your credit rating.</text></comment>