Comments on: Excellent Debate on P2P Lending across Blogs

By: Colin Henderson

Colin Henderson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:52:16 +0000

@Dave – agreed. The last thing we need is any form of artificiality within P2P Lending. Unfortunately I can forsee a day when politicians politicise it though. Even Bernanke mentioned P2P Lending back in June. It is beginning to get their attention.

By: cjenscook

cjenscook — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:01:16 +0000

I’m not sure about that, Dave. A guarantee from a community of interest (what else is a credit union) of bilateral P2P credit may simply be backed by a “guarantee provision” made into a default fund held by a neutral custodian.

With a bit of funding from Norway (where I am writing this – seeing a bank again tomorrow), I’ve been working on a new approach which distinguishes P2P credit and P2P investment.

This article sets the differnt approaches succinctly

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000085

and this presentation in Norway went down well

http://www.slideshare.net/ChrisJCook/money-30

By: Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:40:25 +0000

Tom Watson is right about the tax issue but I think he’s wrong about the guarantee. It would be too easy to “game” and too expensive to police — besides, stopping people lending money from losing it is what got us into this mess! Just equalize the tax treatment and let the market evolve.