Sovereign-Debt Relief And Its Aftermath: The 1930s, The 1990s, The Future?

Since 2008 Europe has been mired in a combination of economic depression, financial crisis, and public and private debt overhangs. Greece was the first advanced economy to restructure its debt in more than a generation, and the ongoing depression in Europe’s periphery has already surpassed the economic collapse of the 1930s by some markers. In most advanced economies record private debt overhangs are unwinding only slowly, while the steady upward march in public debts continues largely unabated. As a result, the broad subject of sovereign debt crises and the role of debt write-offs in their resolution is no longer a matter of solely academic interest.