The government borrows more money than the actual growth of the economy. In other words, a dollar’s worth of debt no longer buys a dollar’s worth of growth, even by the government’s screwed-up definition of growth. From Chris Hamilton at economica.blogspot.com:
Since 2007, marketable federal debt has exploded by $12 trillion while Intragovernmental debt has risen a relatively gentle $2 trillion…all while the Federal Reserve directed Federal Funds Rate has been pushed to zero. And after a short respite from ZIRP, another push to ZIRP is almost surely in process, or even a furtherance, moving into NIRP and the paying of lenders to undertake loans. But why?
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 