Posted on 12/28/2008 10:00:07 PM PST by gpk9
Source???
Can be traced back to Congress.
Yet nobody listens to me.
“I told you so” won’t cut it when it hits the fan.
$14 Tn in credit card debt?
What currency? CC debt has been going down recently. I don’t think it has ever been above $2 Tn, which is 15% of GDP.
We are having problems, to say the least, but I think you overstate their severity in near hysterical terms.
Makes sense to me.
You forgot to mention that FR has turned into an unmoderated hate-fest among members.
Money Funds a/o 12/23/08: $3,808 bn.
World GDP, 2007:$54,347.038 bn
For a nation of people to have things, they must produce things. Free nations must practice free trade in order to continue their freedoms. Manufacturing is real work. If you don’t don’t real work, eventually, you don’t eat.
I meant to write, free nations must practice fair trade in order to continue their freedoms. The practice of borrowing money from communist nations to purchase goods from those nations is a ticket to economic collapse.
“You forgot to mention that FR has turned into an unmoderated hate-fest among members.”
Bingo.
TED spread?
You sound like you read too much KD over at Ticker Forum.
Either it’s hitting the fan, or it isn’t. I’ve worried until I can’t worry anymore. My business went down the tubes this year, and I was fortunate to take a big income hit for a job with a former customer. Oh well, it’s enough to pay the monthly expenses, which aren’t much by most people’s standards, apparently. A mortgage under $1K a month, house over half paid off, no other debt.
There are more important things, though. My dad passed away in April, and the holidays will never be the same.
I have no idea what the future holds, and have never been so pessimistic because it doesn’t sound good at all, but if you have your loved ones to gather close to you, it’ll be alright in the end.
The author identifies all of the key problems with the US economy, then through a leap of logic, claims the dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. The fallacy in his logic is, he fails to identify what will replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Ruble? The Peso? Surely not the Euro.
I don’t doubt the dollar will be debased. Chopper and Bazooka are doing everything they can to devaluate the dollar and stimulate inflation. But to jump from that to dropping the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is a massive leap of faith. I’m not buying it.
The word “hyperinflation” is tossed about casually by some people.
Trading green pieces of paper for real stuff seems like a good idea to me -- especially if they lend us the green pieces of paper.
Not to say we don't have a lot of problems, because we do, but $14 trillion in credit card debt? That's total garbage.
There's currently about $2.5 trillion in outstanding consumer credit, of which just under $1 trillion is revolving debt (credit cards). The remaining $1.5 trillion is car loans, education loans, and other non-revolving loans. This amount is partly secured, in the case of car loans and loans given for the purchase of other products.
Now, there is about $14.5 trillion in mortgage debt out there, which is secured to an extent against the value of the real assets backing the paper. Without more accurate figures about the current values of the property backing that debt, it is impossible to say how much of that is actually secured.
IOW, credit card debt is about, what? 7 or 8% of GDP?
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