..from Wikipedia article Government debt

universal debt relief for poorer countries. A less extreme measure is to permit civil society groups in every nation to buy the debt in exchange for minority equity positions in community organizations. Even in dictatorships, the combination of banks and civil society power could force land reform and overthrow unaccountable governments, since the people and banks would be aligned against the oppressive government.

Creditary economics and Islamic economics argue that any level of debt by any party simply represents a violent and coercive relationship that must end. As the existing system of public debt finance based on Bretton Woods is critical to the financial architecture, significant monetary reform would be required to realize this.

Using a debt to GDP ratio is one of the most accepted measures of assessing a nation’s debt. For example, one of the criteria of admission to the European Union’s Euro currency is that a country’s debt does not exceed 60% of that country’s GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_debt#Scale

The idea that civil society groups could overthrow unaccountable governments is encouraging. We have the unaccountable government. Now all we need is the active civil society.

by way of John Mauldin’s Outside the Box

Lawrence E. Mitchell writes in his recent book, The Speculation Economy, “modern American corporate capitalism is the result of human choices. It is a system we maintain out of choice. It is a system that has ramifications beyond the economic that have helped to embed social norms of individualism that interfere with the cooperation necessary for a successful economy and a thriving society.

This is a serious problem and it isn’t clear how it will get fixed.

Can you actually “live” off investments? We’ll see…

PCU, OTE, PT and MTA - all have been providing significant yield

• All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan - Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi
  

  Get your money in balance. Warren and Tyagi show you how to divide and conquer. You will learn to balance your money into three essential parts: the Must-Haves (the bills you have to pay month after month), the Wants (some fun money for right now), and your Savings (so you can build a better tomorrow).
  … optimum Must-Have 50%, Wants 30%, Saving 20% but you have to read the book to understand how this works

• Reminiscences of a stock operator (Hardcover - 1923) by Edwin Lefevre aka Jesse Livermore - a remarkable first person account of stock trading in the 1920’s

Adding to reading list…

• The Science of Getting Rich, a book written in 1910 by Wallace D. Wattles - served as inspiration for The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

  Much emphasis is placed on the emotion of gratitude and the individual’s creativity as the channels for creating wealth; in other words, creating abundance without competing against others
  ..Amazon customer review