Realistically, we are unlikely to see a general debt jubilee in coming years; what we will see instead are defaults and bankruptcies that accomplish essentially the same thing—the destruction of debt. Which, in an economy like ours, effectively means a destruction of wealth and claims upon wealth. Debt will have to be written off in enormous amounts—by the trillions of dollars. Over the short term, government will attempt to stanch this flood of debt-shedding in the household, corporate, and financial sectors by taking on more debt of its own—but eventually it simply won’t be able to keep up, given the inherent limits on government borrowing discussed above.