Time Suspension

OK, we’ve been in quarantine about 33 days. The beat goes on and we will pass 40 days for sure.

What to do about the expenses we encounter? What to do about rent, mortgage, car payment, and that sort of thing? There are some possible answers.


One is a suspension of time. Look at 90 days as a suspension period. During that span no rents or mortgages are payable or due. No penalty for nonpayment accrues. Just a silent nonpayment and suspension of consequences. That’s for the end users.


For the owners of rental property or mortgaged homes – the banks, corporations and individual investors, halt any penalties on them for the payments skipped. They get a hiatus, too.


I know, it is more complicated than that, but let the experts in the rest of the details work out a plan that allows a simple suspension of time from most contracts. End result? We all get through the worst of the Covid19 quarantine and exit with a fighting chance to resume our lives.


Now, there are those who have a ready income to pay their obligations on a timely basis. Those are most likely retired or disabled folks who are living within their benefit income stream. Life goes on for them pretty much as normal. For those who are working, let them pay the ongoing costs of living – food, utilities, services, etc. – out of the income or savings they have available. They exit their quarantine without the headache and crushing debt of three months of rent or mortgage plus penalties.


Now, property taxes will need a different payment structure; whatever is required, invent it and implement it to save both the taxpayers and the taxing bodies who are serving residents throughout this tough period. We need each other; don’t bankrupt either or hamstring them.


Making time stand still for major financial contracts is temporary and digestible in our large economy. Try this solution to buy time until we have a better handle on managing the virus and its aftermath.


While we are at it, why not shutter the stock market for a period until calmer minds are at the helm?


April 22, 2020