That means everybody ends up owning more, and sooner or later, some of those people won't be able to keep making these repayments on an ever-larger amount of debt, so they start defaulting, and then we've go the defaults, we've got less lending, the bank's are panicking, people are still repaying their debts if they can do, so the money supply's shrinking, that leads to less spending, and that leads to your recession. 