It would be interesting to see what it looked like into the 1920's.

I was thinking the same thing. From other charts that Steve Keen has posted I recall that the economy then also experienced both decline in GDP and massive increase in debt, but there were not the stabilizers such as SS, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, etc., nor did the USA already have debt as a huge proportion of GDP when the Crash of '29 struck. We won't repeat those mistakes. We will make new and worse mistakes this time!

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."