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

[squalidbear.livejournal.com]

Those bastard cheap-ass Canadians, getting all free health-care and shit off their 2% loan-sharking.

[apparentparadox]

I bet that they only paid up so that BushCo can't force them to join us in the next war we start.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

The entire international banking system is predicated on this crap - there are MANY such international loans which show up as assets on the books of the lender.

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.

[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.