{"id":68252,"date":"2024-05-19T18:18:12","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T23:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68252"},"modified":"2024-05-19T18:18:12","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T23:18:12","slug":"because-were-still-not-sufficiently-indebted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68252","title":{"rendered":"Because We&#8217;re Still Not Sufficiently Indebted&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title unpublished\"><a href=\"https:\/\/rubino.substack.com\/p\/because-were-still-not-sufficiently\">Because We&#8217;re Still Not Sufficiently Indebted&#8230;<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><strong>Now the government wants your home equity<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/missing-puzzle-piece-revealed-behind-inexplicable-strength-us-consumers-700-billion-phanton\" rel=\"\">Zero Hedge<\/a>\u00a0just posted a long look at how the \u201cbuy now, pay later\u201d (BNPL) industry now accounts for about $700 billion of largely unreported \u201cphantom debt\u201d. This, speculates ZH, is why the economy hasn\u2019t fallen into recession.<\/p>\n<p>Now come the unintended consequences:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Pernicious effects of BNPL credit are piling up: the Harris Poll survey conducted last month, provides some crucial clues about how Americans use BNPL. For one,\u00a0<strong>splitting payments into smaller chunks encourages more spending, obviously.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>More than half of respondents who use BNPL said it allowed them to purchase more than they could afford, while nearly a quarter agreed with the statement that their BNPL spending was \u201cout of control.\u201d Harris also found that 23% of users said they couldn\u2019t afford the majority of what they bought without splitting payments, while more than a third turned to the services after maxing out credit cards\u2026<\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned-image-container\">\n<figure>\n<div class=\"image2-inset\"><picture><source srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 1456w\" type=\"image\/webp\" sizes=\"100vw\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"sizing-normal\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg\" sizes=\"auto, 100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 424w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 848w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 1272w, https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg 1456w\" alt=\"\" width=\"603\" height=\"372\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/14e69e9b-8e50-47e7-a636-af9b5b16ece6_603x372.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:372,&quot;width&quot;:603,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:60148,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}\" \/><\/picture><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2026In other words, not only do we not know just how big the BNPL problem is, it is actively masked by credit agencies which can&#8217;t accurately calculate the FICO score of tens of millions of Americans, and as a result their credit capacity is artificially boosted with far more debt than they can handle&#8230; and\u00a0<strong>that&#8217;s why the US consumer has been so &#8220;strong&#8221; in recent years, defying all conventional credit metrics.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>BNPL is obviously dangerous and stupid because the last thing working people need is another way to wrack up more unpayable debt.\u00a0<em><strong>But it\u2019s not the worst thing the US is considering:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"header-with-anchor-widget\"><strong>Enter\u2026Government-Funded Home Equity Loans<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h4><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ca.finance.yahoo.com\/news\/3-trillion-could-injected-u-192408915.html\" rel=\"\">$3 trillion could be injected into the U.S. economy without any federal spending by tweaking this corner of the mortgage market, \u2018Oracle of Wall Street\u2019 says<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-end-cta-full\">\n<div class=\"visibility-check\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because We&#8217;re Still Not Sufficiently Indebted&#8230; Now the government wants your home equity Zero Hedge\u00a0just posted a long look at how the \u201cbuy now, pay later\u201d (BNPL) industry now accounts for about $700 billion of largely unreported \u201cphantom debt\u201d. This, speculates ZH, is why the economy hasn\u2019t fallen into recession. Now come the unintended consequences: [&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":[195,7544,827,834],"class_list":["post-68252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-john-rubino","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68252","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=68252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68253,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68252\/revisions\/68253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}