[kenberg]

From the Business Insider article

Quote

And thanks to the declining debt and declining interest rates, Americans have basically never had an easier time making their debt payments, as this chart shows.

Certainly this is at odds with what we often hear. I heard that the Clintons were having trouble with house payments and Romney had no idea where his next Cadillac was coming from. I have the uneasy feeling that if I actually want to understand this then I am going to have to put some effort into it.

[blackshoe]

Without reading the article, this looks like quarterly change in overall debt as a percentage of, well, something (total personal debt?) over some years. So it looks like credit card debt isn't changing much, but that may just mean that folks like Ken and I keep the total low (in my case non-existant - I have only a "visa check card" tied to my checking account. If there's no money in the account, the card is, how do they say it? "Declined". And I suppose folks who keep their cards maxed out all the time are still doing that, too.

[Al_U_Card]

kenberg, on 2014-July-28, 17:18, said:

An impressive graph, but we must always approach such things skeptically. What is public and private debt? For example, it was not all that many years ago that I paid cash for almost everything. Now I use a credit card for almost everything. It is not unusual for my "debt" to be $1000 before it is paid at the end of the month. But, when the bill arrives, it is immediately paid in full. We are speaking of bookkeeping, not debt, here. Which number, 0 or 1000, is counted as private debt?


Don't get me wrong, I was brought up to abhor debt. I use these damn credit cards because the game is rigged. They jack up the prices to cover the cost merchants pay for using the cards, and then give the customers some, a fraction, of it back for using them. Very clever, those folks. So I play along, what else? But some graphs reflect something real, some graphs don't, so I ask for what it all means.

I don't doubt for a moment that modern retailing and banking have drawn a great many people in way over their heads. We still need to break down the figures some to see what is really happening.

Perhaps almost of as much interest is the "shape" of the curve (or any other such as markets etc.) especially the "head and shoulders" aspect that appears about ready to form with the last shoulder being in the next 10-20 years or so. Alan Greenspan is the architect of the current fiscal policy and he was an ardent student of the Great Depression and how it was "handled". (By that I mean that the banks and banksters made out like bandits and the brunt of the economic misery was handled by Joe Public. Just another "hmmmmnn" thingee...