No. One man's assets are another man's liabilities. And debt creation is always based on a better tomorrow. Why most big companies (there may be very few exceptions) have a shitload of debt? Even Oil giants have a tremendous amount of debt. Debt is always paid back with more debt (in hope of a better tomorrow). This systems works extremely well as long as tomorrow IS better than today. It will collapse, it must collapse when the growth stops. In this regard, Ludwig von Mises was actually wrong since he always describes perfectly a middle ages based trading and marked based society but not capitalism (so after 1750). He also dreamed of "treasure boxes" that entrepreneurs must have in their cellars to do investments. There are no treasure boxes and it is the pressure from debt that give us this tremendous dynamic.
Let him speak for himself: http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-credit-expansio... He is right with that. But what he does not say is that ALL booms bring a credit expansion. This is the very inherent thing of a boom.
Small joke on the side:
"Net worth": http://christianfinanceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/n...
Exactly. National debt is a liability for the nation. It's an asset for the central bank which created it. Ipso facto the central bank owns the nation.
The only people who can logically value the perpetually indebted existence of billions of people and the massive leverage that comes with that as a net gain are the central banks to which the debt and interest is owed.