Yes. I am not an economist but it troubles me that economists would be unawares (or claim to be unawares) about this aspect of the history of debt. As usual Wikipedia (the wise, the all-knowing) has a page[1] about it. Mass debt relief and forgiveness is unexceptional in history and certainly has precedent.

Even as recently as the turn of the century (only a decade-and-a-half ago!) there was an international movement[2] calling for the cancellation of a great deal of so-called third world debt as many countries spend more on debt reparations (just paying off the interest) than on building up the infrastructure of their countries or spending on health or education.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_relief

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_2000

Coincidentally 2001, 2008 and 2015 are Debt relief "Shmita" years according to Abrahamic tradition. The Bible instruction is to provide debt relief to creditors every seven years. Putting my non-religious hat on, I wonder if this crept into the bible from ancient society's observations that human credit cycles last seven years.

I thought it mentioned every 50 ((7*7)+1) years in the bible?

Very interesting about this coinciding with a notion of a short human credit cycle in actuality. Wasn't there an economics article on here recently that claimed that there are natural short and long human credit cycles?

In the Bible, "At the end of every seventh year you must cancel the debts of everyone who owes".

In Judaism, on Shmita years debt is remitted.

On Jubilee year, land lost is returned. Indentured slaves are freed. (I interpret this as returning lost collateral.)

1987 was also a Shmita year.

1967 was a Jubilee year. Israel's land was returned.

The long credit cycle you referred to, may it be the Kondratiev wave?

It kind of reminds me of how in some MMO games, they periodically reset the world to keep the game balanced. It usually means there's a defect in the world design, but it's a valid strategy for keeping the game going.