According to Steve Keen, private debt growth in the United States has been outpacing GDP at a rate of 2.7% per year since 1955. The baby boom has been on a generational bender, encouraged by the so-called Greatest Generation which was demoralized by the Second World War and has utterly failed to transmit the American values of industry and frugality to its children. And despite all that has happened so far in what Keen calls the Great Financial Collapse, total private debt has barely declined at all. The drunkard just keeps going back to his bottle.
Government everywhere specializes as co-dependents in this addiction problem, spending money it does not have on anything but the truly urgently needed things like clean water, sewers, oil refineries, natural gas storage capacity, nuclear power plants, a secure electrical grid, and bridges. Instead it hands out borrowed funds so that Americans can go more deeply into debt by buying depreciating assets like houses and automobiles. Only a few lonely souls like Dave Ramsey have gotten religion and are telling people what they need to hear: pay off debt or sell it if you have to, and eat more red beans and rice.
The debt level is truly ominous, in excess of the level of the early 1930's, and approaching 300% of GDP, as Keen's research shows.
The increase becomes unsustainable at some point, followed by a great deflationary collapse. This storm is not over by a long shot.
