The great deleveraging – US households see access to debt diminish. Housing affordability and reversion to the home price to family income ratio.
Households in the US continue to face a painfully slow process of austerity via debt deleveraging. In a debt based system like the one we live in access to debt is viewed by many as access to money. That is, your ability to finance a car, home, vacation, or even a college education is largely […]
The financial benefits of food stamps – Record $78 billion worth of food stamps issued in 2011. Select Wal-Mart stores pulled in 25 to 40 percent in revenues from food stamps according to a recent analysis.
When you think of food stamp usage you rarely think about big financial profits. Yet some businesses are managing to get a big piece of the food stamp pie. Last year alone the government spent a record $78 billion in food stamps. This is a large amount of money and this is why you might […]
The contagion of the European Union and banking debt – 20 European Banks have liabilities above 50 percent of their home country GDP. Why an EU FDIC is highly unlikely in the short-term.
The crisis in Europe is boiling over yet again. The central connecting factor of all of this is too much debt relative to production. Debt in itself is not a bad thing. If you borrow modestly for a home and have sufficient income to cover your mortgage payment then this might actually be beneficial. When […]
The burden of unsupportable debt. US debt-to-GDP growing at a pace rivaling certain European nations – The dramatic problems of peak debt in 2012.
What makes this global financial crisis unique is that it is based on unsustainable levels of debt. In historical cases you would have sovereign nations defaulting on their debts but these were more isolated and clustered, not global issues. Today virtually every large crisis that is hitting is occurring because of peak debt situations. No […]