Right. But it would start accruing again in following months.
Well, Madoff is 77. So he could apply for Social Security… oh wait…
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t say they’ve earned it or deserve it (generally; some might have and some might) but them suddenly losing it benefits me in no way, including emotionally.
Mortgage-backed securities collapse when people can’t pay their mortgages, and it causes the worst recession since the 80s. Now in 2015 people not paying their mortgages is supposed to fix the problems caused in part by people not paying their mortgages.
But it’s all good if it punishes the 1%. 
Regards,
Shodan
Wouldn’t all lenders simply write contracts requiring the debt to be repaid prior to the Jubilee amnesty?
Yikes…you teach economics and think this would be workable?? 
Reading through your linked article:
This all sounds good and reasonable on the face of it, but I dare say things have gotten a bit more complex since the time of the ancient Egyptians, or even the Christians or ‘kings’ when these things supposedly happened. I think that doing this would have some pretty large unintended consequences that a lot of posters up thread have already talked about. Even on the face of it, forgiving ALL debt AND letting all prisoners go (we can certainly free the slaves without ramifications today, at least in the US) would be extremely chaotic. Hell, just freeing all prisoners would be pretty chaotic alone.
Ok, so it wouldn’t actually be ALL prisoners. But, still, you are talking a million folks currently locked up let free. Even if they are all non-violent that would be pretty chaotic to have them all released with their sentences commuted. And you’d probably have a ton of legal types attempting to get anyone not on the list on it, which would bog down the legal system.
On the fiscal side you’d have complete chaos. You’d instantly wipe out a boat load of capital and probably cause a lot of banks to go under. After all, if you are wiping out personal debt then mortgages would be wiped out too. I owe maybe $200k on my house, but now I owe nothing and it’s mine, free and clear (or, is it the banks now and what I’ve put into it has been wiped out?). SOMEONE is going to take a hair cut on that. Same with my car, and my credit card debt and everything else. While I’m sure it’s a comforting feeling for you that it would be the rich taking the bath I doubt it would work out that way in every case.
Well sure. I mean, if society and civilization (or at least the US) completely collapsed then we wouldn’t need lobbying or PACs anymore in the wasteland. This would make the Great Depression look like the dot com BOOM period.
The real answer to everything from global warming to deforestation, to be sure! Once everything collapses then the survivors will no doubt be happier and more free to pursue their goals of…er, well, trying to survive in the wasteland I guess. But, happily the US economy has nothing to do with the rest of the world, so our complete collapse would probably go unnoticed…
The article specifically mentions that court judgments would be cancelled. Presumably that includes ongoing payments as well as lump sums, though I doubt the author thought things through to that level.
The most serious problem is that the threat of a jubilee would change behavior. Who would loan anyone money if there was a looming threat of it being cancelled? Well, the rich would continue to loan money to each other, by the author’s rules–debts over $1M stick around. So they continue to benefit from the ability to borrow.
But everyone else is screwed, since mortgages, car loans, business loans, and so on would simply disappear. Everyone would have to lease instead. Which means that the rich are the only people who would own anything of significance at all.
Other than a straight seizure and transfer, I’m hard-pressed to think of a faster way of destroying the ability for the average person to own property.
What does the lender do if you don’t pay on time?
Regards,
Shodan
Repossess. This is likely to hurt the borrower more then the lender.
You can’t repossess houses or other real property.
Why?
What are you going to do, load it on a flatbed? 
Basically, because the law historically placed a premium on the rights of homeowners and created lots of hoops for lienholders to jump through. That’s why even today you still have to go through hoops to foreclose on a house.
I was using repossess as a general term that includes foreclosure and eviction.
It may not be easy, but it’s certainly possible. And worth it, if the alternative is taking a haircut on a $500k mortgage.
Are you planning to participate in the discussion, or just watch? I’m curious why you would even ask the question you did in the OP. Do you think it could ever work in a modern society? If so, why?
As to the decarceration aspect…
I think a goodly majority of state and federal prisoners could be released without significant negative consequences, especially if the boatloads of money spent on their incarceration were redirected to things like pre-K education, police training and salaries, and substance abuse and mental health treatment–or really any economically productive spending (tax cuts, if that’s your thing!).
Inflating our prison population fivefold over three decades was a failed social experiment. It cost us untold billions and by most accounts is responsible for something on the order of 10% of the reduction in crime we saw over that period. I feel confident we could achieve similar or greater reductions in crime and get a bunch of other positive social effects with a realignment of resources.
Of course, a lot of people who deserve retribution in some cosmic sense would be let off the hook, but we can let God sort 'em. If you insist, I’d be OK with lopping off some fingers or hands. Much cheaper and better for the convict than the current prison and post-prison system.
The recidivism rate in the USA is very high (cite). Quite a few prison inmates are sociopaths who simply cannot follow rules or obey laws. Release them arbitrarily, and many of them will be rearrested within months.
Recidivism is high. But the conclusion you draw–that recidivists are sociopaths–is incorrect. Most studies suggest recidivism happens because we make it impossible to integrate back into society after prison. It is extremely difficult to get any kind of legal job, both because of formal legal bars and informal discrimination against convicts. We spent tens of thousands of dollars on a person to incarcerate them, but next to nothing to help them put their lives back together.
There are some people who need to be imprisoned, of course. Actual sociopaths. People too far gone down the road of addiction. Just plain fucked up evil people. But the number of such people hasn’t increased 500% in 30 years! Such people have always been with us. We could imprison people at 1970 rates and do just fine.
Relevant chart: http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/1_US_prison_pop_1925-2013.png
Bonus chart: https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/hpzz3fqf44c316m/images/35-8fe12c3521.jpg [That’s 2000-2013]
Yeah, but then we would no longer be #1 in the world in incarceration rates!! Why do you wan us to be a 2nd rate country?
During that same period the US population has nearly than tripled, going from 115m to 320m. Not sure what that means, but it’s an interesting stat.
(My first thought when I read your chart was to wonder what the US population was, and whether you could account for the rise in prison population compared to the overall population, but that doesn’t work out. My WAG though is that the various wars on drugs accounts for the sharp rise in prison population verse the overall population increase…I actually think that THIS part of the OP might not be such a bad idea, if you also rolled back some of the drug laws that cause that increase in prison population at the same time, so as not to have those folks released back in prison again this time next year)