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Anyone know if the reasoning behind not being able to buy individuals debt is legal or if technical/execution?

A marketplace for this kind of relief a la Kiva could be hugely powerful.

Probably so you can't game the system.

Riiiight, because this opaque give us money and we'll buy off some anonymous people's debt is a beacon for piece of mind.

A non-profit marketplace for this built similar to Kiva, LendingClub, etc. increases transparency dramatically.

Not how I intended it. The system was never intended to be used this way; they intended to package up "bad" loans that they get a tax write off for and then wholesale them for pennies on the dollar out to intermediaries. The intermediaries don't get to look at each name on there to see if they are getting a certain debt. It's just given a credit rating and then resold. If the secondary debt collectors can collect on the bad debt for more than they purchased it for they make a profit.

By gaming the system I meant that someone might go into debt, don't pay, wait for them to offer it up on the secondary market and then buy back the debt for pennies on the dollar effectively forgiving their own debt. They might need to have someone else buy the debt for them but it's essentially the same process.

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