It's called the year of jubilee. It's not insane, and it has been applied to developing nation debt. A lot of thinking has gone into what wide-scale debt forgiveness might look like.
Are you talking about the Jubilee Debt Coalition's efforts? Those are directed towards "the unjust and unpayable debts of the poorest countries," per Wikipedia, and have zero to do with Doctorow's post about forgiving consumer debt in the United States.