Solomon said people he talks to are worried about not just the debt, but how it's "accelerated" over the last five years, "and it doesn't seem like we have the ability to pull it back." He argued that aggressive fiscal stimulus has become "kind of embedded" in how democratic economies operate. The debt has ballooned significantly since the financial crisis, he noted, and federal figures do show it increasing from roughly $10 trillion in 2008 to its current level, over three times as large.