This is the opening paragraph of the Third Quarter Analysis:
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Rising Debt Toll
By the mid-1980’s, the marginal revenue product of both nonfinancial debt and total debt (MRPD) fell below their historic ranges (MRPD is the additional dollar of GDP generated by an additional dollar of debt). The MRPD for the latest four quarters for both debt aggregates are very near the record lows that stretch back to 1945 and 1870, respectively (Chart 1). As the inefficiency of debt increased over the past four decades, numerous scholarly studies have verified this deleterious impact of debt on economic growth. The historic trends and the studies indicate that the use of debt capital has moved well beyond the productive phase. This is in accordance with the law of diminishing returns, a basic concept in economic theory.
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