Instruments of Liability

A thorn by any other name would prick no less.

Jim writes:

I noticed that TCMDO no longer means total credit market debt owed. It now means all credit market instruments.

Here are the total (blue) and Federal (red) instruments of liability on a log scale...

Graph #1

... showing a remarkable swelling of government debt between 1974 and 2001.

The blue line shows total credit market debt instruments of liability, which includes the Federal portion. So some of the up-going of the blue line can be attributed to Federal. Nonetheless, private and other non-Federal debt continued to increase during those years. That's the reason Federal debt growth in those years was not as successful as the Federal debt growth of the FDR years, in creating conditions for an economic boom to follow.

(You may have to read the two previous posts for this one to make sense.)