{"id":30654,"date":"2018-02-08T08:28:58","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30654"},"modified":"2018-02-08T08:28:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:28:58","slug":"the-state-of-the-american-debt-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30654","title":{"rendered":"The State of the American Debt Slaves"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2018\/02\/08\/the-state-of-the-american-debt-slaves\/\">The State of the American Debt Slaves<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>It was one gigantic party. But wait\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Total consumer credit rose 5.4% in the fourth quarter, year over year, to a record $3.84 trillion not seasonally adjusted, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/releases\/G19\/current\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Federal Reserve<\/a>. This includes credit-card debt, auto loans, and student loans, but not mortgage-related debt. December had been somewhat of a disappointment for those that want consumers to drown in debt, but the prior months, starting in Q4 2016, had seen blistering surges of consumer debt.<\/p>\n<p>Think what you will of the election \u2013 consumers celebrated it or bemoaned it the American way: by piling on debt.<\/p>\n<p>The chart below shows the progression of consumer debt since 2006 (not seasonally adjusted). Note the slight dip after the Financial Crisis, as consumers deleveraged \u2013 with much of the deleveraging being accomplished by defaulting on those debts. But it didn\u2019t last long. And consumer debt has surged since. It\u2019s now 45% higher than it had been in Q4 2008. Food for thought: Over the period, the consumer price index increased 17.5%:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-38925\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/US-consumer-credit-total-2017-Q4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"486\" height=\"413\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit card debt and other revolving credit<\/strong> in Q4 rose 6% year-over-year to $1.027 trillion, a blistering pace, but it was down from the 9.2% surge in Q3, the nearly 10% surge in Q2, and the dizzying 12% surge in Q1. So the growth of credit card debt in Q4 was somewhat of a disappointment for those wanting to see consumers drown in expensive debt.<\/p>\n<p>The chart below shows the leap of the past four quarters over prior years. This pushed credit card debt in Q3 and Q4 finally over the prior record set in Q4 2008 ($1.004 trillion), before it came tumbling down via said \u201cdeleveraging.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-38926\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/US-consumer-credit-cards-2017-Q4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"493\" height=\"426\" \/><\/p>\n<p>These are not seasonally adjusted numbers, and you can see the seasonal surges in credit card debt every Q4 during shopping season (as marked), and the drop afterwards in Q1.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The State of the American Debt Slaves It was one gigantic party. But wait\u2026 Total consumer credit rose 5.4% in the fourth quarter, year over year, to a record $3.84 trillion not seasonally adjusted, according to the Federal Reserve. This includes credit-card debt, auto loans, and student loans, but not mortgage-related debt. December had been [&hellip;]<\/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":[3891,1605,175,10067,195,14713,303,1805,827,3650,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-30654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-auto-loans","tag-consumer-credit","tag-credit","tag-credit-card-debt","tag-debt","tag-debt-slaves","tag-fed","tag-student-loans","tag-united-states","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30654","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=30654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30655,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30654\/revisions\/30655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}