Uh, what?

[bjarvis]

Interesting news item... Britain makes final WWII replayments to Canada and US.

I'm not sure what surprised me more:
(a) that I didn't know there was an outstanding debt left from WWII;
(b) that it wasn't paid off long ago; or,
(c) that the US and Canada didn't forgive any outstanding balance decades ago.

I wonder what other financial commitments from WWII (or earlier) are still outstanding by any of the parties involved.

Comments

final repayments

[trawnapanda.livejournal.com]

The Beeb reported this back in May.

It was the tail end of lend-lease. All war materiel was essentially donated to the UK/ war effort, but that ended with the war, and that which didn't go back to the states became debt. At the end of WWI, there was even more indebtedness, and that is not being paid off -- that non-repayment was part of the actual carriage of the WWII debt, rather than the forgiveness of the loan, according to someone quoted in the BBC article.

But then, if you could borrow at 2%, I'd pay that back as slowly as possible too. and apparently there is still debt from the Napoleonic wars still kicking around.

Re: final repayments

[cuyahogarvr.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you responded like this, otherwise I would have to. The reality of it all is that all of the major players are indebted to each other, the financial entanglements are mind-boggling.
Also, bear in mind, these were loans for re-building the country after the war, which was in the best interest of the US because of the evil threat of the emerging Soviet block. We did the same for France, Italy and Western Germany. Should they have been forgive? Sure, years ago. Should we have repaid OUR debt? Sure years ago.