The decline in U.S. productivity certainly isn’t helping matters and is downright scary compared to previous decades. Why the decline? Too much regulation limiting business formation is the usual suspect, and there is merit in that, but we would also attribute low productivity to what we have called a ‘lost decade’ of opportunity to boost productivity by the US Fed and corporate board rooms. As to the Fed, most of the money raised after the Great Recession went to buy back our own Treasuries (Quantitative Easing, or QE). That’s not very productive. On the corporate side, some 70% of the doubling of corporate debt since 2008 has gone to pay dividends and buyback stock. That’s not terribly productive either. Good for the stock market, but not productive. Productivity matters when it comes to growth.