debt

A recent POLITICO piece entitled “He’s Destroyed Conservatism: the Republican Case Against Trump’s GOP” features an extensive interview with one Stuart Stevens, a long-time political adviser and operative who worked to get a great many Republicans elected. Stevens is and has always been one of that breed of Republicans who call himself a “Never Trumper”,…

The Federal Reserve held its first Federal Open Market Committee meeting this week.As expected, the central bank held interest rates steady but the overall posture of the Fed came off as rather dovish. Quantitative easing will continue into the near future and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell left the door open for future rate cuts.The Federal…

It’s like Dawn of the Dead on Wall Street. Zombies are everywhere.Even as stocks continue to push to new highs, the number of money-losing companies listed on US stock markets has ballooned to levels not seen since the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, nearly 40% of US-listed companies are losing…

Are consumers getting close to the end of their road of debt?There are some indications that they might be and that’s not good news for an economy built on consumers spending money they don’t have.Total consumer debt grew and set yet another new record in November, according to the most recent data released by the Federal…

The US federal government ran a budget deficit of over $1 trillion in the 2019 calendar year. It was the first budget deficit over $1 trillion in any calendar year since 2012 — in the midst of the Great Recession.The budget shortfall from January through December totaled $1.02 trillion, according to the latest report issued by the…

Reuters has dubbed the 2010s the “decade of debt.”The Reuters report focused on the ballooning levels of corporate debt, but consumer and government indebtedness has skyrocketed over the last 10 years as well. This massive debt bubble poses a significant systemic risk to the financial system and the economy. Some in the mainstream are starting to hint at this,…

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.This seems self-evident, but as Jim Rickards noted in a recent article about the ever-growing levels of debt, people tend to ignore this indisputable truth.Total global debt reached a record of over $250 trillion in the first half of 2019, according to an Institute of International Finance report published in November.…

Expert blames government programs Have you heard? The Democrats are going to fix the student loan mess! They’ve brought up the issue in almost every  Democratic Party presidential debate. All we need is a good government program and we can easily solve this $1.64 trillion problem.Never mind that government programs caused the problem in the…

Crisis pushing American consumer debt to new record How much more can the auto loan bubble blow up before it pops?Total auto loans and leases outstanding for new and used vehicles increased by another 4.3% year-on-year in the third quarter, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. This was a factor in pushing total…

Loans burying taxpayers, stealing from future generations American consumer debt pushed to a new record of $4.15 trillion in September. Part of that equation – the continued surge in the levels of student loan debt.Student loan balances jumped by $32.9 billion in the third quarter this year, pushing total outstanding student loan debt to a new record…