{"id":23886,"date":"2017-05-05T20:57:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T01:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23886"},"modified":"2017-05-05T20:57:14","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T01:57:14","slug":"the-coming-debt-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=23886","title":{"rendered":"The Coming Debt Reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Coming Debt Reckoning<\/a><\/h3>\n

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American workers, as a whole, are facing a disagreeable disorder.\u00a0\u00a0Their debt burdens are increasing.\u00a0\u00a0Their incomes are stagnating.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why.\u00a0\u00a0In truth, it would take several large volumes to chronicle all of them.\u00a0 But when you get down to the \u2018lick log\u2019 of it all, the disorder stems from decades of technocratic intervention that have stripped away any semblance of a free functioning, self-correcting economy.<\/p>\n

The financial system circa 2017, and the economy that supports it, has been stretched to the breaking point.\u00a0 Shortsighted fiscal and monetary policies have propagated it.\u00a0 The result is a failing financial order that has become near intolerable for all but the gravy supping political class and their cronies.<\/p>\n

Take consumer spending.\u00a0 This is the primary driver of the U.S. economy.\u00a0 Yet it requires vast amounts of credit.\u00a0 In fact, American consumers presently hold $1 trillion in revolving credit.\u00a0 At the same time, they have nowhere near the income needed to finance these debts, let alone pay them off.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, the flipside of credit is debt.\u00a0 Obviously, the divergence of increasing debt and stagnating incomes is a condition that cannot go on forever.\u00a0\u00a0But it can go on much longer than any sensible person would consider possible.<\/p>\n

Debt Slaves<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If you haven\u2019t noticed, the financial services industry is extremely accomplished at compelling people to go whole hog into debt.\u00a0\u00a0Moreover, the entire fiat based financial system, which depends on ever increasing issuances of debt, hinges on it.\u00a0 Just a slight contraction of credit, like late 2008, and the whole debt repayment structure breaks down.<\/p>\n

On an individual basis, there are only so many credit cards that can be maxed out before the shell game ends.\u00a0 Wolf Richter, of Wolf Street<\/a>, recently clarified the relationship between the economy and deep consumer debt:<\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Coming Debt Reckoning American workers, as a whole, are facing a disagreeable disorder.\u00a0\u00a0Their debt burdens are increasing.\u00a0\u00a0Their incomes are stagnating. There are many reasons why.\u00a0\u00a0In truth, it would take several large volumes to chronicle all of them.\u00a0 But when you get down to the \u2018lick log\u2019 of it all, the disorder stems from decades […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,15254,12043,11763],"class_list":["post-23886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-disorder","tag-economic-prism","tag-mn-gordon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23887,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886\/revisions\/23887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}