In all fairness, graphing that only makes sense in inflation-adjusted dollars, which judging by the legend isn’t the case (the seasonal adjustment only smooths the differences between quarters).
Mind you, I still expect it will keep it’s shape in the last few years, but it might show the current point as below the 2009 peak (not that it makes it any better).
Sorry, I used to work in Finance and am a bit of stickler for clearity in Financial and Economic figures :/
I’m not an economist but anecdotal evidence that I’ve picked up from a number of different sources in the last couple of years lends me to believe that consumer debt is pretty darn high. This is from the Federal Reserve and what else is an average schmuck supposed to look at?
Oh yeah, the explosion of indebtness at all levels has been the tendency for decades now, certainly ever since money creation started being done by the banks themselves when they lent money (there’s an interesting paper from the Bank Of England called “Money Creating in the Modern Economy” which is quite the eye-opener on how money is created nowadays)
All the obcession with Public Debt is to a large extent smoke and mirrors: both consumer and corporate debt have grown just as fast or even faster and are very high as percentage of GDP compared to the historic average.
In many ways we’re repeating the period that led to the Great Crash of 1929.
My point in the last post was about the graphic itself rather than critical of the point you were making.
In all fairness, graphing that only makes sense in inflation-adjusted dollars, which judging by the legend isn’t the case (the seasonal adjustment only smooths the differences between quarters).
Mind you, I still expect it will keep it’s shape in the last few years, but it might show the current point as below the 2009 peak (not that it makes it any better).
Sorry, I used to work in Finance and am a bit of stickler for clearity in Financial and Economic figures :/
I’m not an economist but anecdotal evidence that I’ve picked up from a number of different sources in the last couple of years lends me to believe that consumer debt is pretty darn high. This is from the Federal Reserve and what else is an average schmuck supposed to look at?
Oh yeah, the explosion of indebtness at all levels has been the tendency for decades now, certainly ever since money creation started being done by the banks themselves when they lent money (there’s an interesting paper from the Bank Of England called “Money Creating in the Modern Economy” which is quite the eye-opener on how money is created nowadays)
All the obcession with Public Debt is to a large extent smoke and mirrors: both consumer and corporate debt have grown just as fast or even faster and are very high as percentage of GDP compared to the historic average.
In many ways we’re repeating the period that led to the Great Crash of 1929.
My point in the last post was about the graphic itself rather than critical of the point you were making.