A debt jubilee is a clearance of debt from public records across a wide sector or a nation. Such a jubilee was proposed as a solution to debt incurred or anticipated during the

COVID-19 recession The COVID-19 recession, also referred to as the Great Lockdown, is a global recession, global economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The recession began in most countries in February 2020. After a year of global economic slowdown ...

. The American economist Michael Hudson is a proponent of a debt jubilee, writing in a ''Washington Post'' op-ed that it was an alternative to a depression. Similarly, anthropologist

David Graeber David Rolfe Graeber (; February 12, 1961September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books '' Debt: The First 5,000 Years'' (2011) and ''Bullshit Jobs ...

pointed to kings' historical use of debt jubilees during regime changes to suggest that a debt jubilee would have been an appropriate response to the

2008 financial crisis 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...

. Australian economist

Steve Keen Steve Keen (born 28 March 1953) is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. The major influences on Keen's thinking ...

is a proponent of debt jubilee. To deal with debt we have to address the trillions of outstanding bad debts. Over the past decade, the world’s central banks have sent interest rates to record lows as their response.

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