100 million credit card accounts are gone since 2008 – Credit card balances decline by 22 percent since their 2008 peak.
Credit cards have been used as a lifeline and a way to live beyond one’s means in the United States for many years. Yet the current environment of deleveraging is hitting credit cards hard. The outstanding balance on credit card debt has reached a level last seen over a decade ago. This is positive since […]
QE3 into infinity and stagflation – Federal Reserve now purchasing over 50 percent of MBS and planning on buying $40 billion per month into infinity.
The Federal Reserve is playing with financial fire here. The last employment report was terribly weak and no amount of spinning can make it good. The drop was largely based on hundreds of thousands of Americans dropping out of the labor force. Is that really a positive sign? Last week we received data from the […]
The swan song of stagflation – Gas prices up over 100 percent from 2005 and incomes are stagnant. Ignoring a $16 trillion debt headline and repackaging food to hide stagnant incomes.
If you look around your daily life you realize that your purchasing power is losing value. For a few decades now the middle class in the United States has demonstrably shrunken like clever food packaging. Over the last forty years we have lost 10 percent of our middle class. Most have fallen into the lower […]
Debt bubble amnesia – 40 percent increase of Americans with accounts in collection in the last decade. System still heavily reliant on extreme consumption.
The debt hangover is still giving the nation a deep headache. For example, in 2003 10 percent of Americans had an account in collections. Today, it is more than 14 percent. The addiction to debt is both troubling but what is more surprising is how little was learned from the financial crisis. The stock market […]