Innocuous Proclaimations | Michael Hudson

``We're in a permanent debt deflation. To make it brief, people think in terms of business cycles -- as if whenever things go down, they automatically recover. But every business recovery since World War II has taken place with a higher level of debt -- higher and higher and higher. Finally, by 2008, the volume of debt was so high that it was absorbing all the economic growth. At that point the stock markets plunged, especially when it became apparent that the business plan of the large banks was economic fraud and junk mortgages.''