America’s economic pundits are not very
creative, observes Anthony Randazzo. For the past several years,
their gripes about economic growth have fallen into several staid
categories: Monetary policy (“the Fed should do less” vs. “the Fed
should do more”); the struggling housing market (“let housing
bottom out” vs. “we must save housing”); income inequality (“it
doesn’t matter” vs. “it does matter”); and the federal deficit
(“lower taxes, pretend to lower spending a lot” vs. “raise taxes,
pretend to lower spending a little”).

While most of these are legitimate causes of economic
stagnation, Randazzo writes, there is another category that is
having an outsized negative impact on growth: privately held debt.
Simply put, there won’t be a recovery until credit card and
household debt levels come down.

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