Isn't the "miracle" just a persistent unexpectedly higher level of inflation, over a long period of time, doing a soft-default and screwing over long bongholders?
Yes, either that, or a relatively stable fiscal picture coupled with moderate economic growth. Keep the deficit low-ish, and keep posting the growth numbers that have marked most of the last decade, and the debt situation looks a lot more manageable after not all that long.
it's not painless because it exacerbates income inequality. Remember, debt holders (especially those leveraged into assets with debt) benefit from monetary inflation.
If you factor in equities that hold debt, the upper class actually holds more debt than the lower class, especially per capita.
Not everybody remembers what it was like before Bob Marley became popular outside of the Caribbean.
"Bong" was not widely recognized in the US vocabulary since it referred only to one of the legendary Rastafarian techniques for smoking their ganja, other than "spliffs", and not very many Americans had even heard of the Rastas at all back then.
This was a bamboo tube about 2 inches in diameter with a water chamber at the bottom and a smoking inlet there. All other "water pipes" which had become popular with the hippies had been derived from South Asian hookahs, which had been readily available in all sizes imported from India for decorative use since before there were hippies.
Nobody ever called them "bongs" until the Jamaican came along.
And these were 4-foot long pieces of bamboo, anything less was not considered a "bong" until a number of years later.