Related sidebar: one of the observations Jefferson made while in France at the beginning of the French Revolution was that institutional debt prevented needed c

Related sidebar: one of the observations Jefferson made while in France at the beginning of the French Revolution was that institutional debt prevented needed changes from ever taking place. That is, the country was so intertwined in various entities owing various other entities that there was no solution that was acceptable to a plurality. One of the ideas I've toyed with over the past few years is a "debt sunset clause" for all debts, both public, private, institutional, and governmental. Whenever you lend money, you have, say, 30 years to get it all back. Or it's gone. The clock starts when you write the check. From a market standpoint, the additional risk would just be written into the interest rate. But from a systemic standpoint, major gains could be achieved. That way you wouldn't have to have "debt holidays", "debt forgiveness" and so on. It would just take care of itself. (And if you wanted, you could have different time frames for different types of debt, but then you're heading down the over-complicating route again)