As you have to pay more interest and amortization on what you owe, you're left with less and less money to buy goods and services - unless you borrow even more and go further into debt.

I think we're in the take-the-money-and-run stage of the economy. So the banks may go under, but the bankers, who make the policy, clean up.

Europe is acting in a very self-destructive manner, but is doing so because it's trying to be loyal to the United States.

The worst loophole is what Donald Trump has talked about: the tax deductibility of interest. If you let real estate owners or corporate raiders borrow the money to buy a property or company, and then pay interest to the bondholders, you'll load the company you take over with debt. But you don't have to pay taxes on the profits that you pay out in this way. You can deduct the interest from your tax liability.

In order to be an economist these days, you have to participate in this fairytale that somehow we can recover and still make the banks rich. And it is a fairytale.

From 2008 to 2016 all the growth in the American economy, all the growth in national income, was earned just by the wealthiest 5% of the population. So they got all the growth. 95% of the population didn't grow. If you can get a flat tax or other lower tax, as Trump is suggesting, then this richest 5% will be able to keep even more money. That means that the 95% will be even poorer than they were before, relative to the very top.

Debts grow and grow. And the more they grow, the more they shrink the economy. When you shrink the economy, you shrink the ability to pay the debts, so it's all an illusion that the system can be saved. The question is, how long are people going to be willing to live in this illusion?