The debt is as "real" as the assets. All it would take to erase a good chunk of it is for people to stop paying or for significant inflation to occur, among man

The debt is as "real" as the assets. All it would take to erase a good chunk of it is for people to stop paying or for significant inflation to occur, among many other possibilities. Edit: I'm not trying to suggest some kind of Fight Club-esque reorganization of society's financing structures. I'm just talking about the way that debt tends to get fractionally charged off when it goes to collections.