I'm guessing that bankers and governments have
forgotten the tennets of Debt in the last 5000 years,
as told by David Graeber.
Where debtor prisons had become a thing of the past,
they are now all the rage in the US. Countries are
also being enslaved, and debt is the bait.
Except now we have the Euro , that great leap forward
into the Middle Ages because countries cannot
cancel their debt. The whole country gets enslaved.
Here's a brief explanation from Demetri Kofinas