One serious predicament we face is that the current leaders in the halls of monetary and political power do not appear to understand the dimensions of our situation. The mind-boggling part about it is that the situation is easy to understand.

Our collective predicament is simply this: Nothing can grow forever.

Sooner or later, everything must cease growing, or it will exhaust its environs and thereby destroy itself. The Fed is busy doing everything in its considerable power to get credit (that is, debt) growing again so that we can get back to what it considers to be “normal.”

But the problem is – or the predicament, I should more accurately say – is that the recent past was not normal. You’ve probably all seen this next chart. It shows total debt in the U.S. as a percent of GDP:

(Source)

Somewhere right around 1980, things really changed, and debt began climbing far faster than GDP. And that, right there, is the long and the short of why any attempt to continue the behavior that got us to this point is certain to fail.

It is simply not possible to grow your debts faster than your income forever. However, that’s been the practice since 1980, and every current politician and Federal Reserve official developed their opinions about ‘how the world works’ during the 33-year period between 1980 and 2013.

Put bluntly, they want to get us back on that same track, and as soon as possible. The reason?  Because every major power center, be that in D.C. or on Wall Street, tuned their thinking, systems, and sense of entitlement during that period. And, frankly, a huge number of financial firms and political careers will melt away if/when that credit expansion finally stops.

And stop it will; that’s just a mathematical certainty. It’s now extremely doubtful that the Fed or D.C. will willingly cease the current Herculean efforts towards reviving this flawed practice of borrowing too much, too fast. So we have to expect that it will be some form of financial accident that finally breaks the stranglehold of failed thinking that infects current leadership.

The Math

As a thought experiment, let’s explore the math a little bit to see where it leads us. After all, I did just say that a poor end to all of this is a “mathematical certainty,” so let’s test that theory a bit. I think you’ll find this both interesting and useful.