Collateral that Cannot Be Possessed

The latest ill-considered plan announced from the powers that be is the project to find foreign sources to extend credit to land on collateral that the creditors cannot according to Ukrainian law possess. Did anybody actually look up the word? Collateral is security pledged for a loan that the loaner can collect if the borrower for some reason or another does not pay the debt back. Otherwise, it is simply not collateral. Would you loan money against security you cannot by law possess? Maybe you would like to borrow against my apartment, except that you can never have it. I, for one, have plenty of things to borrow money on if you can never collect them. I think they might better stay at home, but I will be happy to take the money, thank you.

The bitter truth of the matter is that credit requires something that can be taken away from you if you fail to pay back what is due. If the domestic sources of credit are inadequate, there have to be mechanisms to collect from those who cannot or will not pay. In most of the world, the system of credit has relied upon land on the bet that most will not (but some inevitably do) lose it. Here, however, we have a special situation such that we will either witness a situation of mass appropriation by those once appointed to manage what was theoretically other people’s land (the collective farm feudal lords who still have overweening power in the villages) or a system of programs to try to retain for people as farmers what by right is theirs. The credit resources for this need not be large. After all, how much does a rototiller cost? And never forget that the collective farm heads are just waiting to take over the bounty of the land they neither inherited nor earned but covet. They are not the concern of anyone interested in social justice. Let them reap what they have sown.

Those who actually work the land above all need the chance to get down to business. Then, after a decent interval, we can talk about private credit, mortgages, and the right to lose what one already has, but only after the rightful owner has truly made it his own. The collective farmers’ land is the bounty of their forebears. Too many died for it, suffered for it, and everything possible has to be done so that the rightful heirs of the victims of all those crimes this land has witnessed at long last come into their own. Let them then do with it as they please but in a situation whereby they have a real choice. Elementary decency and justice demand no less. Who can serve the land better than those whose ancestors have worked it since time immemorial?