Americans living beyond their means (Economist Paul Kasriel sees party ending, hangover beginning)

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/proof-americans-living-beyond-means/story.aspx?guid=%7B66122EA ^ | 9-9-07 | HERB GREENBERG

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SAN DIEGO (MarketWatch) -- You will have to pardon Paul Kasriel, chief of economic research at Northern Trust in Chicago, if he hasn't been the life of the party over the past seven or eight years. The 60-year-old economist, tapped in 2006 as the top economic forecaster by Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, has spent a good deal of that time trying to warn anybody who would listen about such things as excessive household debt while taking a jab or two (or three) at then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "Illusory" is how, in October 2004, Kasriel described the wealth created by Greenspan's interest-rate cuts in one of his edgy and somewhat irregular reports dubbed, "The Econtrarian," which are available on Northern Trust's Web site. A few months later, as household spending continued to sizzle, he wrote, "Today's 'partying' in terms of a disproportionate share of national output being 'consumed' by the household sector is a recipe for a 'hangover' tomorrow." And in case you are wondering whether Kasriel has any regrets about having provided less-than-rosy outlooks that challenged conventional wisdom while others were celebrating record home sales and soaring stock prices he doesn't. "I look at the numbers and I have a sense of history," he says, as the sound of wind causes his voice to fade in and out during a telephone interview while he was on a sailboat on Lake Michigan, where he spent this past week. Sailing on that lake, known for its unpredictable conditions, is an appropriate hobby for an economist like Kasriel. He believes sailing makes him a better forecaster. And as a forecaster, he is concerned more than ever about the economy, which he believes could be headed toward a "painful" recession.

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You pegged it.

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The Motley Fool’s Credit Center features several more mind-blowing statistics:

Total consumer credit: $1.7 trillion.
Credit card debt carried by the average American: $8,562.
Total finance charges Americans paid in 2001: $50 billion.
Percent of U.S. households deemed credit worthy by the lending industry: 78%.
Number of credit card holders who declared bankruptcy last year: 1.3 million.

http://www.fool.com/ccc/secrets/secrets.htm

[Badeye]

Ave credit card debt was $8,000 when Bush was elected. Now it is down to $4000.

We’ve done very well in that regard during his time in office as well.

[LibLieSlayer]

He is as informed as Pat Robertson.

LLS

[goodnesswins]

Thanks for my first morning chuckle....soooo true.

[Sig Sauer P220]

Americans: Buying things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to try to impress people who don’t care.

[wbill]

I am an engineering type, to me the glass is twice the size it needs to be to do it’s task.

I'm an engineer, too. I think that it would be far better to keep 1/2 the water in a redundant glass.

[VegasCowboy]

The difference now, though is that the taxpayers are expected to bail out the mortgage companies.

Really? I'm sure that's news to the 91 mortgage companies that have gone belly up so far this year. You should tell them when the bail-out is coming. They'll be thrilled!

[B4Ranch]

;)

Nice call

[SuziQ]

I seem to remember articles exactly like this in the late 80's and early 90's; Americans too much in debt and living beyond their means. Don't remember too many of them while x42 was President. Then they started up again when George W. Bush started talking about tax cuts again.

Could be a coinkydink, but I don't think so.

[rb22982]

Not really, it’s just been refinanced into mortgages more than being paid down. Which at the rates for most of the last 5 years is an overall positive for the consumer though.