The protests provoked surprise and wonder among analysts and activists, many of whom had written off the public as politically apathetic.
To head off this danger, Turner says, money financing should be used sparingly, and for specific reasons: to pull an economy out of a lengthy slump, to pay for the recapitalization of too-big-to-fail banks, or to write off excessive public debts.
Joshua Rauh, of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, reckons that seven American states will have exhausted their pension assets by 2020.It would be a mistake to write off the public-sector unions.
Also, the present structure had allowed Mr Winsor "to write off astonishingly large sums of public money, apparently on his own authority".
While Syriza founds its vision of a new Greece in socialism, promising to write off national debt, hugely increase public investment in services and the welfare state and raise employment levels, the Independent Greeks have taken a more populist stance by opposing immigration and multiculturalism and calling for a greater role for the Orthodox Church in education.
Since one arm of the Japanese government is effectively lending to another arm, the public debt owned by the central bank could simply be written off.
Do they see consumers as having legitimate knowledge and concerns that they need to be aware of, or do they write off consumers as a lay, ignorant public?
It has since been pressing home its advantage, leaning on the banks to accept huge injections of public funds to write off their remaining bad debts.
But with the banks in such a mess, partners may have to be lured with public money to write off their bad debts.
And it's even worse to write off young people as unfit for public office.
