Former Reagan Budget Director Despairs: ‘I Wouldn’t Touch the Stock Market With   a 100-Foot Pole’   Here are excerpts from the AP interview [emphases added]:      Q: Why are you so down on the U.S. economy?      A: It’s become super-saturated with debt.      Typically, the private and public sectors would borrow $1.50 or $1.60 each year   for every $1 of GDP growth. That was the golden constant. It had been at that   ratio for 100 years save for some minor squiggles during the bottom of the   Depression. By the time we got to the mid-’90s, we were borrowing $3 for every   $1 of GDP growth. And by the time we got to the peak in 2006 or 2007, we were   actually taking on $6 of new debt to grind out $1 of new GDP.      People were taking $25,000, $50,000 out of their home for the fourth   refinancing. That’s what was keeping the economy going, creating jobs in   restaurants, creating jobs in retail, creating jobs as gardeners, creating jobs   as Pilates instructors that were not supportable with organic earnings and   income.      It wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t real consumption or real income. It was bubble   economics.      So even the 1.6 percent (annual GDP growth in the past decade) is overstating   what’s really going on in our economy.    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/former-reagan-budget-director-despairs-i-wouldnt  -touch-the-stock-market-with-a-100-foot-pole/