"Without debt, economies cannot grow"

Cecchetti et al, 2011 (PDF; page 3):

For all these reasons, financial deepening and rising debt go hand in hand with improvements in economic well-being. Without debt, economies cannot grow and macroeconomic volatility would also be greater than desirable.

On the one hand they offer "financial deepening and rising debt" without end. On the other hand they show us a world "without debt". Those are the extremes of the spectrum: using no credit at all, or the perpetual approach to using no money at all, and credit for everything. They are defending the view that financial deepening and rising debt are always good. And that comes from a paper that opens with these words:

Debt is a two-edged sword. Used wisely and in moderation, it clearly improves welfare. But, when it is used imprudently and in excess, the result can be disaster.

I should add that immediately following the "Without debt, economies cannot grow" sentence, they go the other way again:

But financial development is not some magic potion. The accumulation of debt involves risk...

Hey, I don't have a problem with considering both sides of a problem. My problem is that Cecchetti, Mohanty, and Zampolli think that constantly rising debt goes "hand in hand with improvements in economic well-being". Shouldn't that idea be challenged as weak and baseless on the face of it? But weak and baseless or not, that's apparently what they think. And that's despite all their idle chatter about wisdom and moderation.

Add to this, then, my objection that they offer only all or nothing, with no middle ground. With no middle ground, they leave no room for the possibility that the level of credit use which best promotes economic growth is somewhere in the middle ground. All or nothing, those are the choices they offer.

No.

Talk is cheap. It's easy to say debt is a double-edged sword. But it's hard to assimilate that idea and work it into all your thinking. And that's what economists have to do.