What Move The Zero is proposing is not a new idea; it has indeed been done before.

Origins

Debt relief existed in a number of ancient societies; it was believed that prolonged indebtedness was corrosive to growth and prosperity. It was also believed that debts should be forgiven after a certain time and under certain circumstances.

Debt forgiveness is mentioned in the Book of Leviticus, in which God councils Moses to forgive debts in certain cases every Jubilee year - at the end of Shmita, the last year of the seven year agricultural cycle or a 49-year cycle, depending on interpretation.

This same theme was found in an ancient bilingual Hittite-Hurrian text entitled "The Song of Debt Release" [1].

Debt forgiveness was also found in Ancient Athens, where in the 6th century BCE, the lawmaker Solon instituted a set of laws called seisachtheia, which cancelled all debts and retroactively cancelled previous debts that had caused slavery and serfdom, freeing debt slaves and debt serfs.

In addition, the Qur'an (the Muslim scripture) supports debt forgiveness unable to pay as an act of charity and remission of sins for the creditor. The injunction is as follows:

If the debtor is in difficulty, grant him time till it is easy for him to repay. But, if ye remit it by way of charity, that is best for you if ye only knew.        -Qur'an 2:280

In Modern Times

War Reparations. In the mid-20th century, the 1953 Agreement on German External Debts, which substantially reduced German's war reparations, is a notable example of international debt relief. Part of the reasoning was that German's World War I reparations were deeply resented in Germany, and credited internationally as a cause of World War II, and thus debt relief helped reconciliation and peace in Europe.

Debt Forgiveness For African Nations. Debt Relief in Some African nations has been provided in a similar vein to that which we propose. Two initiatives were established to reduce debt stocks of recipient countries by 90 percent.

The HIPC Initiative. In 1996, the World Bank and IMF launched the HIPC Initiative to create a framework in which all creditors, including multilateral creditors, can provide debt relief to the world's poorest and most heavily indebted countries to ensure debt sustainability, and thereby reduce the constraints on economic growth and poverty reduction imposed by the unsustainable debt-service burdens in these countries. 

To date, 36 HIPC countries have reached their decision points, of which 32 (including Guinea-Bissau today and Togo on December 14) have reached the completion point.

The MDRI. Created in 2005, the aim of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) is to reduce further the debt of eligible low-income countries and provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  Under the MDRI, three multilateral institutions-the World Bank's International Development Association, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Fund-provide 100 percent debt relief on eligible debts to qualifying countries normally at the time they reach the HIPC Initiative completion point. [2]

References

[1] Harms, William (1996-02-01). "Linking ancient peoples". The University of Chicago Chronicle 15 (10). http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/960201/hittites.shtml. Retrieved 2011-11-29.

[2] International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2011-09-06). "Debt Relief Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative". International Monetary Fund http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/hipc.htm. Retrieved 2011-11-29.