2017-01-28wolfstreet.com

This is the third year since the Great Recession when GDP growth dropped below 2%. The Fed's policies of eight years of cheap credit have entailed soaring debt levels among companies, governments, and consumers -- money borrowed from tomorrow that was spent today. Borrowing for productive investment is one thing. Borrowing for consumption is another: it boosts GDP but creates a debt overhang with no productive assets that generate income to service that debt in the future; that debt service for prior consumption then acts as a burden on future consumption.

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This weird condition -- the magic world of QE and ZIRP -- has blocked the essential process of economic and financial cleansing back in 2009, but has also kept the economy from taking off afterwards. And so it's wobbling along, over-indebted and heavily encumbered, with nearly all assets overpriced, kept aloft below stall speed on a monetary wing and a prayer.

As the article mentions, inflation is also resurgent.



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