A couple of years ago, I was telling a friend and neighbor (who was working at the New York Fed at the time), that I was concerned about the mountains of debt that were being used in buyouts.  My friend was looking into hedge fund leverage for Timothy Geithner and agreed that someone ought to do the same for PE funds, but I don’t think anything ever came of it.  My big concern back then was the appearance of a deal structure that struck me as having the wrong incentives.  I was also worried that we were piling on too much debt as a nation in general, which would be bad should we hit a hiccup down the line.  Well the hiccup has arrived and it is much more than a hiccup.  I have started to pull together some data on just how much debt we have and the picture is uglier than I imagined.  I am planning to do a series of posts about four major areas of debt, which I have come to think of as the four horsemen of this economic crisis: consumer debt, financial sector debt, corporate debt and government debt.  First up will be consumer debt.  Everyone knows that American consumers had been on a spending binge the last few years, but the numbers quite staggering and their implications daunting.  Details tomorrow.