"We" do not owe "ourselves." Governments, businesses, and individuals owe other individuals, banks, and governments. What is the worst that can happen? A gov

"We" do not owe "ourselves." Governments, businesses, and individuals owe other individuals, banks, and governments. What is the worst that can happen? A government defaults on its debts, and then cannot secure the loans needed for some other very important work. Large numbers of defaults will cause interest rates to rise, and everyone suffers as a result. The "contagion" effect is also possible: a bank sees too many defaults from its clients, and then finds itself unable to repay its own loans, triggering more defaults elsewhere. If the obvious answer is, "Can't we just forgive the debt," the answer is, "Sure, but we need to be careful." Forgiving all debt would break the markets, because it would remove the negative consequences of investing in bad ideas. Sometimes a business has to be allowed to fail. So the better answer is that central banks would have to buy some of the bad debt, just enough to prevent a cascade of defaults and other worst-case scenarios, but leave creditors holding enough bad debt to feel some "pain" when the defaults happen (in some cases, allowing creditors to fail entirely -- as long as it is not too many too quickly).