"Easy Al" Greenspan

From Barrons: "The accompanying chart, which comes to us by grace of Trey Reik, of Clapboard Hill Partners, a New York-based investment outfit, shows one of the singular effects of Mr. Greenspan's eagerly accommodating reign at the Fed. It tells the story of credit in this fair land from 1916 through the present. Keeping in mind that Mr. G took over in 1987, you can readily see the trajectory picks up altitude abruptly from then until now.

Mr. Reik observes that for the past 100 years, the nation's credit-market debt has averaged between 140% and 160% of gross domestic product. The principal exceptions came in 1929, when the stock market went bananas, and in 1933, during the traumatized period that followed the Great Crash, when four years of the Depression (GDP shrank by an awesome 45%) hoisted the ratio to 287%, prompting a devaluation of the dollar. That was the all-time peak, never approached again until the remarkable rise that began in the 1980s and has resolutely continued ever since, lifting the ratio to today's astonishing 304%."