Posted on 06/08/2012 11:17:15 AM PDT by blam
U.S. Debt Load Falling At Fastest Pace Since 1950s
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
June 8, 2012, 12:01 a.m. EDT
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Everyone knows America has too much debt. What they don’t know is that things are getting better, not worse.
Little by little, our economy is reducing its debt burden, slowly repairing the damage caused by 10, 20 or 30 years of excess.
If you want to know why economic growth has been so tepid, here’s your answer. Four years after the storm hit, the economy is still deleveraging. And it’s very hard for any economy to grow when everyone is focused on increasing their savings.
Total domestic — public and private — debt as a share of the economy has declined for 12 quarters in a row after surging over the previous decade. The rapid rise in federal debt over the past four years has distracted us from the big picture. The level of public debt is indeed worrisome, but it’s not as big a worry as the economy’s total level of debt — public and private.
Although we have a whole cottage industry devoted to warning us about the dangers of too much public debt, we don’t have any comparable Cassandras telling us about the dangers of too much private debt. Yet the history of the past 30 years (or 300) clearly shows that too much debt, of whatever variety, can pose a systemic risk to the national and global economies.
As much as we hear politicians, pundits, tea-party patriots and the Congressional Budget Office obsessing about government debt, it was excessive private debt — not public debt — that caused the 2008 financial meltdown. And it was private debt — some of it since transferred to the public —
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(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Sppppiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnn.......
Are we supposed to believe this?
Pretty soon, they’ll be talking about Hussein’s “surplus”.
I wonder how much of the debt decline is due to foreclosures??
So, let me get this right.. private individuals and corporations are shunning debt.. but its okay that the government keeps piling more on, because the people are shunning it faster than the government is piling it on?
Lunacy
Good article. A couple more years sounds about right.
The lengths to which the MSM will go to prop this loser up never ceases to amaze me!
Wait, who believes this sh*t!
If American families aren’t doing what he says they’re doing — reducing their debt burden — they’re stupid.
As for Obama’s debt, it’s unconscionable. More so even than George Bush’s, because it’s bigger. I wish my fellow conservatives had been yammering about the debt explosing - both government AND private — when Bush was president. Bush helped fuel the private debt bomb, by promoting no-down-payment home loans for low incomes.
If Bush hadn’t been a disaster as president, Obama wouldn’t be president today. So bush got us coming and going.
If American families aren’t doing what he says they’re doing — reducing their debt burden — they’re stupid.
As for Obama’s debt, it’s unconscionable. More so even than George Bush’s, because it’s bigger. I wish my fellow conservatives had been yammering about the debt explosion - both government AND private — when Bush was president. Bush helped fuel the private debt bomb, by promoting no-down-payment home loans for low incomes.
If Bush hadn’t been a disaster as president, Obama wouldn’t be president today. So bush got us coming and going.
If there is falling private debt it is because people without jobs and people who are in fear of losing their jobs, are not buying anything except the bare necessities.
And savings are a bad thing.
And short-selling, and new home sales in the tank...
1. A whole lotta people have realized “holy crap, I gotta get out of debt!”
2. The graph would look a whole lot better if the government hadn’t piled on $5T debt in the last 3 years.
For every dollar you don’t spend paying off debt is a dollar in your pocket, not hard to understand?
lol...That article has so much spin I’m getting nauseous.
Obama, knowing that shedding too much debt either by foreclosure or by choice is a bad indicator of economic expansion, has decided to start including 1 trillion in student loan debt into the consumer debt figure.
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