Debt Weight Loss

"Only unbelievable, Louden! I'm going to do an editorial for the school paper: When determination becomes insanity."
--Margie Epstein (Vision Quest)

WSJ article observes that high debt levels worldwide are weighing on economic progress. Artificially low interest rates encourage borrowing and spending that pull economies out of tail spins like the 2008 credit crisis.

However, all of this borrowing merely serves to pull future demand into the present. Down the road, there is less capacity for funding consumption as balance sheets are laden with debt and incomes must be diverted to paying creditors.

Central banks are unable to raise rates back to previous levels as higher rates add even more burden debtors and discourage additional borrowing.

What the article ignores is that economic tail spins that suppressed interest rates and borrowing are supposed to solve, like the 2008 credit crisis, were themselves funded by easy credit and debt. How does more borrowing and debt solve a problem funded by borrowing and debt?

It does not take a genius to conclude that, at some point, such a ponzi-like pyramid is destined to collapse under its own weight.