Stuff You Should Know - How the Rolling Jubilee Works

Episode Date: October 10, 2017

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I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Brighton, there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Come on aboard the Roland Jubilee. Yes. Not to be confused with the jamboree, which is what the Boy Scouts do. Yeah. Roland Jubilee sounds so fun and for a lot of people, it is. Yeah.

Unless you're like a Wall Street shark who hates seeing lower income people get out from under debt miraculously, it's a great time for everybody. I honestly didn't know much about this thing. So good. I didn't either. Yeah. Actually, I saw it in the sidebar while I was looking for an article to do and I was like, I have no idea what that is.

So let me check it out. And it was just one of those hidden gems, if you will. Yeah. Should we talk? Let's talk about debt, baby. Yeah. And I want to say like this is largely about the Roland Jubilee, but we're going to scratch the surface of the consumer debt secondary market.

I would love to do one on just debt and debt collection and just the whole industry and the, I guess, the whole massive ball of whack sometimes. The business of debt. Yeah. And like, in what cases it's actually good to have and how it kind of powers the economy, all that stuff. Did we ever do one on bankruptcy? No.

All right, we should fit one of those in there, too. We got a lot to do. We have a lot left to do. More work to be done. Yep. All right. So let's, in this case, we're talking about consumer debt. In the United States, it is an astounding number and problem.

Is that fair to say? I would say that, yes, I think that might even be an understatement, although, so as of this, when this article was written, which appears to be about December of 2012, it was a bigger problem than that it is now from what I'm seeing. Well, I have a higher number now than then. Okay, go ahead. Well, the number I see, well, the original number from 2012 was 11.44 trillion. Tril trillion.

The number I got today was 12.73 trillion. I saw 12.29 trillion. Okay. Wow. Which is still, I mean, that's, yours is almost a trillion dollars more in four years. I'm sure those are, so that's 2017 numbers? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Well, that would explain, mine was Q2 of 2016. Oh, that's the distant past. A trillion dollar increase in five years. That's all of the household debt, credit cards, mortgages, car loans, old medical bills, all that stuff. Student loans, big part of it. That's a big one too, that all households have in the United States, right? Yes.

As of 2017, hats off to you, man. I could not find 2017 numbers. Yeah. So here's the thing, debt, if you talk to someone who knows finance, they will say, like, debt is not the worst thing in the world. It's not like being in debt. It's got to be the right kind of debt, like owning a ton of money to high interest credit cards is not good by any measure.

Emily and I got smart when we, I think I've told the story, when we bought our house, we had a bunch of stupid credit card debt. And this was, she's 12 or so years ago. And what we did, because they were giving away money back then, foolishly. And this could have bought us in the butt, I guess, if we hadn't of gotten jobs and been able to afford payments, but we rolled all that credit card debt into our home loan. So we literally paid off every cent of it and told each other, we're never going to go into credit card debt again.

And since that day, and it was tough, we have never not paid off a credit card in full at the end of every month. Yeah. We almost always pay them off too, and it's like just the best feeling to be able to look at that stuff and be like, oh, wow, I'm not like dying here. Well, yeah. And to be able to kind of give the finger to a credit card company and say, I'm using you for what you're supposed to be used for, which is to pay for things easier, but to

not mortgage my life away with ridiculous interest rates because I'm buying stuff I don't need and can't pay for. Right. And thanks for the sky miles chumps. Yeah, for real. All right. So that's bad debt. They're all kinds of bad debt, but debt's not the worst thing in the world to have.

What's bad is delinquent debt. Right. And yeah, so there is, like you were saying, I think good debt to have if you live in a consumer-based economy, right, that kind of makes the world go round. But yes, delinquent debt is across the board bad debt for almost everybody involved. Yeah. And about 10% of the debt in the US is delinquent debt. See, this is where I saw a major drop actually.

Oh, okay. So is it not that high anymore? No, man. Like by half. Oh, wow. Yeah. Again, I found Q2 of 2016, but it was in this article that was written in 2012, it says 1.06 trillion is delinquent.

I saw in 2016 it was 589 billion. Oh, well, that's in the right direction. And that about three quarters of that was super delinquent, although I think they call it seriously delinquent. I like super delinquent more. Or way delinquent. Or, oh my God. Which means three months, 90 days late or more, probably not in all cases, but probably

delinquent to the point where you're not going to pay it. Right. But, so there are the banks, as anyone who's ever owed a bill longer than 90 days knows, banks and lenders of any sort will just be like here, here, here, collection agency, go take this. And if you can get something out of them, we'll split what you get. Right? Yeah.

And you're, you're in the cycle because collection agencies, that's their business, right? Lenders lend money, collection agencies try to go get money that's owed, right? They're like a different ilk altogether. And there's actually different kinds of levels of that as we'll see. But you're, you're in the machine and your life's going to be made unpleasant by the people who are trying to collect on those bills, right? Yeah. What the Rolling Jubilee, which we're talking about today, what that does is they have entered

the debt collection industry. But rather than trying to collect on debt, they are buying debt and forgiving it. Yeah. So, here's what can happen. Back up a second. Let's say you owe a ton of money on a bad credit card and you have been delinquent for a little while and you call up that credit card company and you say, you know what, I want to pay this, I spent this money, but your interest rate is really bad.

And can you work with me on this interest rate and get it down to a point and they'll stop you right there and say, oh, sir, or ma'am, I'm sorry, but we don't own your debt anymore. And you go, huh? And you say, no, no, no, no, we sold that debt to an investor and you go, huh? And if you don't know that this is how this works, then, well, you didn't pay attention during the mortgage crisis because that's basically what that was, bundling debt to an investor, bundling loans, mortgages, bad debt into securities that are then sold to those

investors who buy it really, really cheap with the idea that they can then go out and collect on a portion of that to make a big profit. Right. And we'll get into the details a little more in a minute, but the jubilee itself, the idea of buying debt, entering that industry and buying debt, but rather than trying to make a profit like you were saying, but just to forgive that debt so that the people who owe the money don't have that burden any longer, that is the whole point behind it. And if you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this sounds like some sort of plot

out of maybe Occupy Wall Street, well, then you would be 100% correct because at Zuccotti Park in I think 2011, the idea for doing this was bandied about. And there was a guy named Thomas Gorker who was there at one of these conversations. And he went on to found this thing called Strike Debt, which is an offshoot organization from Occupy Wall Street, and Strike Debt has this project called Rolling Jubilee. So it's a direct outcropping of Occupy Wall Street. Yeah. This is in 2012 when Strike Debt was finally launched.

And the whole deal with Occupy Wall Street was basically protesters getting together and saying, well, you'll bail out banks to the tune of billions and trillions of dollars, but the banks don't then in turn say, well, we're going to forgive consumer debt as well since we were bailed out. They'll bail out the big banks, but the consumer is still in big trouble. And so the idea of the Rolling Jubilee and Strike Debt was a bailout of the 99% by the 99%. Yeah.

And there's one facet to that lopsided bailout situation too that I think you left out, which is the banks are getting the bailouts from the government, but the government's getting that money from the taxpayers. And very frequently, those taxpayers who actually gave the money to bail out the banks are the same ones that the banks are turning the thumb screws on. So they're basically saying, thanks for the bailout money. Give us the money you actually owe us individually now. And Occupy had a big problem with that.

And I think for a good reason, frankly, if I can go on record for saying that. Yeah. So I agree. The Rolling Jubilee, as far as structure goes, they have, and we're not going to get too much in the weeds on this, but they have a board of directors and then volunteers who are not paid a cent. Originally, they had brokers in, well, they still brokers and web developers who have been paid, but well, well below market value.

They're not completely donating their time in all cases, but they're getting paid a penance for this cause of what they normally would. Right. So, pre-wrapped cooler sandwiches, money, you know what I mean? Like the kind, not even like a recognizable brand of sandwich that you buy in like a bodega or a convenience store, just, you know, somebody's last name with like a poorly drawn like logo next to it that's over printed. So it's smudgy.

You can't even really see what the logo is supposed to be. That is the kind of sandwiches these people are able to buy with the money they're getting from the rolling jubilee. Yeah. Where there is no discernible difference between the meat and the bread. They've just coalesced into one lumpy moist unit. Yeah. Oh, I know.

I've grossed so many people out there with that word combination. Moist. Yeah. Moist unit. Moist lumpy unit. Is that what I said? Wow. Um, should we take a break so soon?

After moist lumpy unit? Yeah. All right. Let's do that. Let's get to the origins of the word jubilee. Hey, friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home, now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright Josh, I kind of thought Jubilee meant jamboree, because I'm a big dumb dumb sometimes.

Hey, I'm right there with you. But it's not true. It actually comes from the Bible, specifically the book of Leviticus. I'm not sure which one. I used to know all those in order. I could rattle them off. Genesis, a third book of the Bible, I think, right? Like I know.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. I don't know. No verse, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, first and second Samuel, man. Ruth. There's a book of Ruth. Yeah. Some of that stuff really just comes right back into my pea brain. I didn't know that.

So anyway, in Leviticus and the Old Testament, Jubilee is actually an English variation of the Hebrew word Jobel, J-O-B-E-L, which means ram's horn. And this is how you would blow in this horn and announce the signal of the year of the Jubilee. Right. Which came, I saw every 49 years, apparently this article says every 50 years, roughly every half of a century, let's just say. And so they blow the ram's horn and that was a big deal.

So according to Leviticus, Leviticus 25, I guess, which is some section, the 25th section or verse or what? Chapter? Chapter 25. Is it chapter? Okay. Yeah, it goes chapter than verse. Okay.

So the 25th chapter of Leviticus basically says, here's how you do Jubilee. And everyone who is a member of the house of Israel, all the Israelites, right, are to have their debts forgiven. So if you are an indentured servant, you were freed. Yeah. Or if you said, I'm a farmer, but I can't pay this debt, I lost the farm on a bunch of magic beans, because this is, you know, for the common era, and people thought magic beans were a real thing, you would give that person who sold you the magic beans your farm as

collateral basically, and you would lose the farm. But during Jubilee year, you could get that farm back. You were given that farm back, restored your land. Like all debts were forgiven. Yeah. It's basically God saying, I'm a liberal hippie. Every 50 years, we're going to wipe the slate clean. Here's what we don't know for sure is if this really happened.

Right. You can tell, like the Israelites were like, oh yeah, good idea, Yahweh. That's a great one. Nice idea, God. Right. It just kind of didn't bring it up again. Yeah, do you think you noticed? Right.

So we're not sure if that actually happened, but there are records in history of other cultures that did this sort of clean slate tradition. They have records under Hammurabi in Babylonia, in Egypt under Ptolemy, and even the Rosetta Stone has a Jubilee proclamation recorded from 196 BCE. Right. So it did happen. Which, think about this, Chuck, that is really heartening that like pretty early on, I guess, in the agrarian system, once people settled down and all of a sudden you had like surpluses

and income inequality and economic strata, you also had the idea that debt should be forgiven too. Like it was a natural outcropping of that. Because that wouldn't exist prior to those things, because if you're a hunter-gatherer, you can't go into debt. It's not possible. You're responsible for your own food gathering and all that. So the idea that it just kind of naturally emerged out of it, I find that heartening.

It gives me faith in humanity again. Or at least humanity from hundreds and thousands of years ago. So the idea with those jubilees, it was like we said, once every 4950 years, the idea of a rolling jubilee, the word rolling just means it's an ongoing thing, and so therefore they named it rolling jubilee, which just to me still sounds like a party on a farm with people selling whippets out of plastic bags. Right. On ecstasy, hence the rolling part.

That's right. So this is how it works, right? You got the rolling jubilee started. I think they started with a benefit concert and they managed to raise like 500 grand like pretty quickly back in 2012. And what they did was they looked around and they identified like how this was happening. They knew that there were people who were in debt and that the people that they owed the money to weren't even collecting any longer.

That what had developed was a secondary consumer debt market, right? And you kind of went over it a little bit. I think it bears like fleshing out. Yeah. I mean, it's a little hard to wrap your head around if you're not in this world. No, but I don't mean if you live on a different planet, but in the world of finance. If you're rolling on a farm, you may have a hard time wrapping your head around this. But the basis of it is this, right?

So you go to a lender and you say, let me some money. And if you fall behind on your payments, after a certain amount of time, I think you, what did you say, three months? Well, it kind of varies, but sure, it could be. You have reached this level, like a new level of delinquency. And banks say, that's it. You're done. We're not collecting from you anymore.

You're a loss and we're writing you off. And they do this actually because back in the 1980s, up to 1994, the savings alone crisis, which were savings alone banks were the place you went to go get a mortgage in America. And because they were over-regulated from the interest rates they could charge, the banks started engaging in risky investment behavior because in that sense, they were under-regulated and they lost a bunch of money. Well, one of the outcroppings of the savings and loan crisis was that there were some really, really shady accounting going on.

And it was actually one of the first, one of the early bailouts. It was like $125 billion bailout, which in 1994, there was an astounding amount. A lot of money. Trump changed today. Sure it is. But at the time, that was a huge deal. So it was a taxpayer bailout of these banks that had engaged in risky behavior and stopped me if this is starting to sound familiar.

But it was largely because they were able to get away with it and the problem got to be so big because the accountants were keeping these bad assets on the books. So debt to you is an asset to the bank. It's something that they've got, they've got money they can collect on from you, right? But these delinquent assets that they had were being kept on the books to make it look like there was a lot, that the banks were a lot more flush than they were. So after the savings and loan crisis, the government stepped in and said, you guys can't do that anymore.

If you have a delinquent account on your books after say 90 days, you have to write it off. But whoa, whoa, whoa. You're the banks and we love you and we want you to be happy and prosperous at all times. So we're going to give you a tax deduction for that too. And they say, well, okay, what do we have to do after we write it off? And the government says, do whatever you want, sell it. We don't care. But you have to write it off and you can take a tax deduction.

And then, yeah, if you want to sell it, do. And that's where the secondary consumer debt market was born. Yeah. And if you think that sounds like a pretty sweetheart deal, it gets even better because sometimes when they bundle this debt together and sell it to people who think they can go out or firms usually, you can go out and make money by just recovering, like we said, just a portion of the stuff of these debts. They will then do the loan deal with that firm as well and make an additional amount

of money as a lender. Yeah. They finance the purchase of that debt that they're selling to the person. Crazy, man. So weird how things work in this country. Weird. It's one way to put it for sure. And you said that they bundle this stuff, like they did with mortgage-backed securities.

They bundled mortgages together and then sliced them up and sold basically them as shares. This is a little different, but there's also bundling going on. But rather than just sell each debt individually, the banks will take, say, all of the ones that they're doing that day or that week or that month or whatever that they've written off and they'll bundle it together into what's called a portfolio. And then they'll sell that portfolio for pennies on the dollar. Yeah. We're talking like it can be, you can spend like $1 to buy up to $32 worth of debt, let's

say. Yeah. I think that's about as good as you can get. That's the best I've seen. I've seen anywhere from $0.10 on the dollar to, yeah, a 1 to 32 ratio. Yeah. Which is, I mean, that's a great, on one hand, it's super cheap, but it's very risky still because what you're doing, again, is buying debt that you may or may not be able to collect

on. Right, exactly. And so like the whole industry is based on the idea that you'll be able to collect some of the debts that are in this portfolio and that you'll probably only be able to collect on a portion of the debts that you do collect on. So some out of the gate, the people just aren't going to pay you. No matter how much you call them and harass them, they're just not going to pay that debt. And if it's small enough that it doesn't make any sense to spend the money taking them

to court, there's just nothing you can do about that. If they're like, I'm on year six of this debt being reported on my credit, I'm not about to pay now because once I make it to year seven, you guys can't do anything about it any longer except to call me. They're not going to pay. But there's going to be some in that portfolio where either the people just want to pay to get you to stop calling. The debt is big enough that you could conceivably take them to court or for other reasons.

So there's going to be some in there that you can collect on. And then when you do collect on those, you're going to collect less usually than the full face value of the debt, right? Yeah. They'll offer a deal. Let's say like, hey, you're behind on your debt and what they're usually doing is trying to target people who were maybe in financial trouble and are now pulling themselves out of financial trouble rather than going after the debt that they, like you said, just probably

have no shot at getting. But now, hey, you got a job again, you're making a little dough. Pay us back like 50% and we'll call it square. And the people think, well, you know, this sounds like a good deal to me. I'll just go ahead and take that 50% deal. Right. Exactly. Sometimes they apparently people are like, wow, that was a really generous thing you're

doing here by offering me to just to resolve my debt for just half of it, you know? But again, those people may have paid 3 cents on the dollar for that debt, but you're about to give them 50 cents on the dollar. So they're making out like bandits. And again, there's something slippery and eel-like and clammy about the fact that you're having to deal with these people who you never even borrowed the money from. You don't know these people from Adam. If you'll forgive the biblical thing, right?

And now like you're, you're, they're inspiring this sense of like gratitude in you for just, you know, charging you for 50% of that debt that they had nothing to do with originally. They just bought on some secondary market. Yeah. And I mean, the whole thing is slippery to me because on one hand, like targeting poor people who maybe lost their job due to circumstances beyond their control, it's not going to help any, it's not going to help anyone to keep them poor. It's not going to help the nation or the economy.

But then there are also people who were very irresponsible with their money and bought too much stuff and said, you know what, I don't want to pay for this. Yes. I'll offer bankruptcy or I'll just, I'll just, I don't care about my credit rating any longer. I'll just go ahead and not pay it. Sure. The thing is though, is for years and years now, the second group of people that you, you pointed out have been used to excuse mistreatment of that first group.

Correct. You know what I'm saying? Like there's no real separation. It's like, oh, they're both debtors. So they, you know, unfortunately they all deserve it. Yeah. And here's the deal with the rolling jubilee. They will, like we said, the whole idea is they will try and purchase these debt packages

just like these firms do. I think they gave an example of one of the firms, like there's one called Encore Capital Group. And here's just one example. I think in 2012, they spent $47 million to buy $1.1 billion worth of debt to make a lot of money on. And they, you know, their aim and what they did in that case was recovered about three times what they invested through these settlements with the debtor.

So let's say they made, you know, $3.2 or, you know, $3.5 billion off that $47 million investment. Oh, no. They would have made like $150 million. They just bought $1 billion worth of debt. Oh, okay. Yeah. Got you a profit.

Okay. Yeah. But that's still, I mean, that's substantial for one quarter. Yeah. For basically just saying, hey, we'll take over the harassing phone calls from here, everybody. Yeah. And this is, you know, they basically, like the banks have given up on this because they don't have, they would have to spend way too much money to not become bankers any

longer and to become bankers slash debt collection agencies. Well, they've just given up on trying to collect what these other people like, no, we do this. This is what we do. So we'll take it. Yeah. Exactly. And again, their required banks or lenders are required by law to write off delinquent accounts after a certain number of days.

So even if they wanted to keep collecting on it, they can't. Yeah. That's right. And we'll talk about a little bit how they do this, but they buy this debt, forgive it, like we said, but it's not like you can't, if you're someone who is in trouble, you can't contact the Rolling Jubilee and say, please buy my debt because it's all lumped together. They do help people and families, but a lot of times they don't even know who these people are.

Sometimes they do. And if they have their personal information, they will then contact them and say, your debt is forgiven. But because it's a Rolling Jubilee, what we would like you to do now is donate a little bit of money back to the cause because your debt is forgiven. And I wonder what their numbers are for stuff like that. Extraordinarily low. For people donating then afterward?

Yeah. So not only donating, but like getting back in touch. Apparently, I read this interview with Thomas Gorky and they asked him that very question, like, what kind of response are you getting from people? And so they've got everybody's personal information. They just don't have it until they buy the portfolio, right? So they'll send everyone in that portfolio a letter saying, here's the amount of debt that you no longer, oh, we bought your debt, it's being abolished.

And I think most people are like, is this a scam? Are you trying to get my social security numbers or something like that? So they're just totally ignoring this letter. And they say, no, we're the rolling jubilee, which doesn't help matters. No, it doesn't because they're like the Boy Scouts. But regardless of whether those people get back in touch, regardless of whether they donate to the cause or not, their debt is still forgiven because the rolling jubilee or strike debt makes this point that their goal isn't to decide, well, who deserves this?

They can't make that judgment because when they buy a portfolio, they have no idea who the individuals are in there. They just know that these people owe money and that the likelihood, since they're delinquent on their debt, that they either are experiencing a time when they're down in their luck or are getting out of a time when they're down in their luck, that is enough. That's good enough for strike debt to justify buying their debt and abolishing it. Well, yeah, and not only that, but rolling jubilee and strike debt's goal isn't, they're not saying we're going to solve the consumer debt crisis or even we're going to solve,

and we'll talk about student loans more in a minute, but we're going to solve the student loan problem. They're literally just saying, we're going to solve a tiny fraction of this, but what our real aim is, is to raise awareness because you can protest all you want, but you simply can't ignore a real program like this. Right, exactly. Because it gets a lot of press too, you know? Oh, sure.

So, let's take one more break, Chuck, and then we'll come back with more on this. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse, and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too.

Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. So apparently, Chuck, initially, they were really worried about how they were going to be able to kind of come into this industry, because it was a pretty tight-knit industry. Yeah.

Like, when a bank goes to sell debt, it's not like they place a WAN ad and say, well, who's out there? Like, they know who's out there. They know who these firms are, and they have trusted, which is kind of a funny way to say it, working relationships with these firms. Right. So they were thinking like, well, we need to have people on the inside buying debt for us.

It's the only way they're going to ever let us do this. We have to sneak around and do it. The way this article puts it is they had sheep in wolves' clothing buying debt for them on behalf of this rolling jubilee, right? So this, again, this article was written in 2012. Apparently that did not pan out at all. Yeah, I would say so. As they got more into it, they almost became amazed at the willingness of this secondary

debt industry to sell to them, knowing that they were going to abolish it or not caring to find out whether they were abolishing it or who they were or what they were doing, which means that this industry is so inscribulous. It doesn't even look out for itself, you know? So I think as they got further into it too, and this may have actually developed since 2012 as well, this industry has spread even more. I think it's a little less tight-knit than it once was. There's a lot of brokers that are set up where they're the ones that are dealing with the

banks and then turning around and selling it on behalf of the banks and then taking a little cut of whatever the portfolio goes for, right? But then there's also websites that do the same thing, just like you have an online stock broker. There are websites where you or I, Chuck, can put together $1,000 and go buy a portfolio that was worth like $10,000 to $30,000. So if you want to really stick it to your fellow man, go do that. Go start doing that because it's something you can do online now.

That is correct. All right. So will this work is the big question. It certainly will work with awareness, but as far as raw numbers go, as of today, which is what, October, was it the fourth? Fifth? It's the fourth. October 4, 2017, they have raised $701,317, which this is a few hours ago, so it's more

than that probably by now, and they have forgiven about $32 million total to date, which like we said is a, not even a fraction, what's below a fraction? An infantisimal amount. An infantisimal amount, did I say infantisible? I think I just made up a word, but it kind of works. It's so infantisimal, it's invisible. That's right. It's such a small amount that it makes no dent in the problem, really, except to those

individuals and families who are like, oh, well, this really worked out for me. But $32 million is raising awareness, which is a good thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, again, like there was a huge thing in 2012 when they first announced it. It was everywhere, right? Everybody was talking about it. They got another bump in 2014, I can't remember what happened, but then I think either this year or last year, they made the rounds with media again by buying debt from something

called Corinthian Colleges, which is a for-profit college like company, corporation. Yeah, yeah, I saw some of that. And Thomas Gorky called them, he said that they were, quote, the worst of the worst, and they have just tons of lawsuits against them for just all manner of activities. And the Rolling Jubilee got something like $3.5 million worth of debt from them. And this would be student loan debt? Yes. And the reason that they were able to do student loan debt is because this is a for-profit

college, so this wouldn't have been federal student loan debt. Yeah, like 90% of student loans are from the federal government, and the federal government does not sell their debt. No. So if you have a student loan through the federal government, the Rolling Jubilee is never going to be able to help you. No. At least not directly like that.

But that also raises one of the longstanding criticisms against this idea. If you are against the entire predatory lending idea of the banking industry and the secondary market, the whole thing, this whole icky mess, right, you're going to criticize strike debt for contributing to it. They're throwing money into it, even though they're abolishing debt, they're still giving money for it, right? And so strike debt's whole thing is like, hey, man, the level that we're operating on is so small that we couldn't possibly affect the market.

Yeah, like in their wildest dreams, they could affect the market such where they could drive up the price and really compete as a top dog in the industry and maybe even drive some of those other firms out of business, and that will never, ever happen. No. And they also point out that banks have to sell this stuff anyway, or they have to get rid of it anyway. By law, they have to write it off. So this debt was going to be sold one way or another.

And they also try to buy debt at that really lucrative stage, lucrative for the debt collectors, where you have been more than 90 days delinquent for about a year, so you probably went through that rough patch like you were talking about, Chuck, but now the likelihood that maybe you got a job again and you're starting to get your debt under control and are therefore amenable to an offer of just paying half, that's the kind of debt they're trying to buy because those are the people who are most vulnerable to this industry, right? So they're saying all this is going to happen anyway, and we're not affecting the debt that people are paying, and we're not really helping the banking industry any more than they would

have been helped anyway. Right. The thing that sticks to me though is, and I couldn't find this, did you see if they bought that debt from Corinthian colleges directly? Oh, I don't know. Because if so, then they were paying money to Corinthian colleges. And I could see that criticism just being there, because Corinthian college or any for-profit university isn't required to write off bad debts.

So they wouldn't be forced to do that if they bought from them directly. They also work with a lender. That's just a guess. I don't know. I don't want to speak to that. Well, I saw this one site that basically was teaching individual investors how to go get into this. And one of the things they suggested was go hang out at small claims court, and when a

company comes in and they're taking some debtor to court to collect on a debt, just go up to them after court and be like, hey, let me handle this. Just sell me all your debts, bundle them together, and I'll buy it from you. So people do go directly to companies that have bad debts on their books. So it's possible they did go to Corinthian college. I didn't see that one. One way or the other. Very interesting.

And then there was one other thing that was kind of an early concern that apparently didn't pan out. And that was that whether or not the government could consider this debt abolishment as income for the person who owed the debt and would therefore owe taxes on it. And so apparently, Occupy, Walsher, your strike debt got with some lawyers. And the lawyers said it is our professional opinion that this would not qualify as income. And so these people should not owe any tax burden. And so far, no one's had, no one's gotten a tax bill for their tax being abolished by

strike debt. It's so convoluted. It's a little convoluted. You got anything else? No, I think that's it, man. Let's see, if you want to know more about the Rolling Jubilee, go check out this article on How Stuff Works. It's a good one.

Grab your ban, Joe. Yeah. And since I keep an ear out eventually for like just a larger debt episode, because it is interesting and weird. And since I said weird, it's time for Chuck. Administrative details. Beautiful. This is part two where we thank people for their lovely gifts and the kindnesses that

they bestow upon us. All right. I'm going to start with Emily Winfield. She sent a, well, she sent me a Reformed Bedwetters Society Pat. I'm on record as a late bedwetter and I'm always championed. People not being ashamed of that. So apparently Emily was and she made a patch. It's really cool.

That's amazing. I got to see that one. I didn't see it. Let's see. Jackson Harder sent us a jigsaw puzzle postcard. I appreciate that. Thanks, Jackson. David Velasquez and Samantha Penna sent another wedding invite.

Oh yeah. Nice. Mazel tov. Nick Sokol sent us a bunch of great stuff from Korea. Thank you very much for that. Jonathan Beals sent us handmade copper flasks from his company, sertoto.com, S-E-R-T-O-D-O. Stuff you should drink. Copper flasks.

They are beautiful. Yep. Terry M has a daughter named Chuck who wrote us a very kind thank you note about the HIV episode and we want to say Terry, we hope your friend's partner is doing well. Absolutely. Chris Wecht of Carleton Brewery in New Jersey. Well, he sent us beer. Thank you.

Ryan and Chloe sent us a Montreal postcard. Thank you. Carolyn Cross. She was very moved by the MS episode because her mom had MS. So she sent some sponge candy from Buffalo, New York to make me feel better about my friend Billy. Nice. That was very sweet.

It was. Connor T sent us some candy, sent us some smarties and a nice letter. Thanks, Connor T. Sarah Vendong, or Vendonge, D-O-N-G-E, sent us her book, I Love, Love, Walla Walla. It's her book about loving Walla Walla Washington. Alexander Pepe. Thanks for the thank you note and you're welcome for helping you kick your diet coke habit. That's right.

Julia Deckman sent us, well, sent some hand-painted pictures. For me, it was pictures of my dear departed dogs, Buckley and LeRon. For you, she sent you one Charleston Hospitality, which was a painting of the Belmont and Queen Street Grocery. And for Jerry, sent her one of a pink peony and you can go to buybyjdeckman.com to check out her work. And since then, we have paid her, she's so sad, paid her for portraits of LeRon and we're about to commission another one for the wizard.

So the core four will be represented by Julia Deckman's art in our household. Nice work. Carolyn, and I'm not even going to attempt your last name, Carolyn. I'm just going to spell it. V-U-I-S-Z-C-Z. That's a swizzle stick. Put that together with a dot com and it will take you to her site, which has her awesome zine featuring us called The Dread appropriately enough.

Jordan Pearson from Canada sent us some Canadian chips, lace ketchup and old Dutch ketchup chips. Sandsgluten is what it says because it's French Canada. And also, Jordan had the nicest handwriting I think I've ever seen. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot for that. Nice handwriting these days.

That'll take you far. Yes, it will. In the past. Let's see. And then Catherine from Velodrome sent us some CDs. Thanks a lot for that, Catherine. Matthew Grubb sent us his first children's book called Tommy P. Tinker and the Super Dupre Rare 1892 bottle cap.

Nice. And then we want to thank Max from Chirps Chips who sent us some chirps chips. Remember in our Crickets episode, well, eating crickets basically. We mentioned chirps and they heard it and they said, here guys, try this. Did you try them yet? I have yet to try it. I think we should try it like on Facebook Live or something like that. That's a good idea.

You know? Jake Moore, and that is with one O, sent us his hot sauce, spank you very much. Because the name of the hot sauce, I'm not just being cheeky. Nice. That's all I've got written down. You got any more? I just got one more. Matthew from Minnesota sent us his joke book, The River of Waha Ha.

Great. I love a good joke book. Great. Well, thanks everybody for sending us stuff and if you want to send us stuff, we always are grateful for it. You can get in touch with us via Twitter. I'm at Josh M. Clark and the official handle is SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffy snow or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

You can send us all an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffy should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never

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