The Financial Sector Really, Really Piled On The Debt

And, I guess, given the slow rate of growth of the economy, the real question to ask of Wall Street is: Why so much debt? Was it just pure leverage for speculation? How productive could that have been had it been invested wisely?

In any event, since the crisis, the financial sector has deleveraged fastest. If that had happened without heavy government borrowing, we would have seen a horrifying Depression: the Mother of all Depressions, actually. Instead, we got a milder, but deep and long-lasting Recession.