Chances of a Recession and Declining Real Estate Prices?

[Kevin Albert]

I was just wondering how many people follow the economy on a larger scale.  If you have given any though to another potential recession of if you expect to see continued growth. 

A bit of background info:

The last time the interest rates were dropped close to 0 percent we had the housing bubble.  The extremely low cost of borrowing caused people throughout the country to overextend themselves causing the problem back then.  The interest rates have now been at 0% for 7 years.  This has no doubt encouraged investing, especially in the corporate sector which now has something like 2.5 trillion in high yield bonds.  This is twice the amount of corporate debt back in 2008. On top of this the quantitative easing programs have recently run out of money and the stock market has slowly begun to stagnate with little growth throughout the year.  Oil prices continue to fall decreasing profit margins for a lot of large companies, but also increasing them for a few.  The total worldwide debt is now over 200 trillion dollars and many countries have stagnating economies, especially in the developing world.  How can this debt ever be paid back?  

I don't know if this problem will come to fruition in the next 5 years or the next 50 years but I think it's something to follow.