hi sepp, this article by ardeshir is too technical for us, but if you want to comment on it or mention it, that'd be great (this is part of that bibo controversy), of course, no problem if not, Michel http://homepage.mac.com/ardeshir/DebunkingTheDebt-VirusHypothesis.html there is a fairly common thesis, based on the fact that money is loaned into existence as interest-bearing debt, that if new loans are not continually being issued in ever-increasing amounts, enough money will not be created to pay the interest on existing loans; and as a result, at least some those loans will be defaulted upon. In essence, the thesis is that if an amount P is created as the principal of a loan (or of a combination of loans), the loan(s) cannot be fully paid back if the total amount of the debt exceeds P – as is necessarily the case when interest is charged. In other words, there would not be enough money in the economy to pay off the entire debt, and therefore some of the borrowers must perforce default. This is claimed to be an inherent feature of the system of interest-based debt itself, and to have nothing to do with the ability of the borrowers to earn enough to pay back their loans. The thesis claims that even if all borrowers could earn enough, by dint of hard or smart work, to pay back their loans, there simply would not be enough money in the economy to enable them all to do so: some of them would *have* to be unable to pay back their loans. In different forms this thesis has been enunciated here<http://www.cyberclass.net/turmel/bankmath.htm>and here <http://bibocurrency.org/> – among other places. The thesis is sometimes called the “debt-virus” hypothesis. -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens