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

[beartalon.livejournal.com]

I am not surprised it wasn't paid long ago, simply by looking at a normal loan. One payment a year, rather than monthly, and at that interest rate, it's not like a lot of interest racks up compared to the actual principal.

In terms of length of time, a 5-year car loan has 60 payments. A payment per year since 1946 is also 60 payments.

Sometimes I wonder how much richer/poorer we'd all be if all nations reviewed their debts to one another and cancelled out as many cross-nation debts as possible or simplify the A owes B owes C to A owes C and be done with it.

Of course, that would be far too simple.

I wonder what change will occur next year when the payments don't come.