Set Up For a Fall?

Calculated Risk asks if we aren't building a pretty precarious economic recovery. The focal point of his analysis is the level of debt, public and private, piled up during the last twenty years and especially during the last four.

Americans have piled up mortgage debt in the amount of $7.3 trillion. This is almost as much as the National Debt, and is a jaw-dropping increase of 15% of GDP since 2000, when it stood at an already-high $4.8 trillion. More than anything, our recovery appears to be based on massive borrowing. How could the economy not recover with an infusion of borrowed cash totaling about 8% of GDP every year? Either America is moving on to a brave new economic paradigm or, to put it mildly, we're screwed.

Hat tip to the Dead Parrot Society.