The problem is that we have been running trade deficits for decades now, mean that most of the debt is spent on imported goods. This led to businesses with high

The problem is that we have been running trade deficits for decades now, mean that most of the debt is spent on imported goods. This led to businesses with high profit margins that are designed to exploit debt, and the economy ended up being based on stocks going up for things like retirement (partly because other governments ended up buying US bonds). This is the main cause of things like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech going bad.