Croatia to forgive poorest their debts

It is one of those headlines you tend to read twice in order to avoid looking stupid when you tell others.

The small European country of Croatia has begun to implement plans to forgive up to 60 000 of its poorest citizens their debts.
One of the countries that emerged as independent nations as the former Yugoslavia dissolved, Croatia's approximately 4 million inhabitants have seen war in the 1990s and are living in a struggling economy.

In case you thought about buying one of the many old castles on the scenic Mediterranean coast and a top of the line Ferrari before filing for debt relief, that's not quite how it works.

The poorest face the toughest burden, often having their bank accounts blocked by creditors, leaving some with no access to money at all. To be eligible for the program, you need to have no more than around 5000 dollars in debts and a monthly income of no more than around 350 dollars.

The most impressive aspect of the program is that, while initiated by the government, the private sector is in board.

The nature of the program plus the fact that the private sector is willing to go along are, of course, major red flags - well, the government is a social democrat administration - to our friendly greedy folks.

Which may be one reason for the very limited media coverage it has attracted.

As of this post, only two of the large German daily papers (Frankfurter Allgemeine and Sueddeutsche Zeitung) have devoted any space to it. Others will follow, but compared to the big headlines on the German Super Bowl World Championship victory, this interesting attempt to solve desperate poverty is relegated to the "misc." section of the mainstream.

We'll keep an eye on what the critics have to say.